Washington Life Magazine - October 2018 by Washington Life Magazine

ANNUAL

Diplomatic Issue NEW AMBASSADORS FOR A CHANGING WORLD

FEMALE ENVOYS TWITTER DIPLOMACY WASHINGTON AND THE VATICAN

<< Cristina Balan, Ambassador of Moldova

FALL FASHION:

Structured Garments and Leopard Prints

BOOKS:

Anand Giridharadas’ “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World”

REAL ESTATE:

Entertainment and Sports Arena Opens in Congress Heights

INSIDE HOMES:

PA RT PAIES! RT PA IE RT S! IE S !

Barry Dixon and Will Thomas’ Historic Warrenton Estate

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EDITOR'S LETTER

FEATURES WASHINGTON LIFE'S ANNUAL DIPLOMATIC DIRECTORY

Economic Club Dinner with Jeff Bezos....................

New Ambassadors for a Changing World .................

Noche de Gala ...................................................

Female Envoys in Washington ...............................

Middleburg Film Festival:Viggo Mortensen and Maggie Gyllenhaal Head to Hunt Country .......

The Nuncio Who Went Rogue ............................... Being a Foreign Student in Trump's USA ...............

Diplomacy by Tweet .............................................

LIFESTYLES

Yemen, Libya and the Fight Against ISIS: An Expert Analysis .............................................

FASHION EDITORIAL Architectural Muse ....... TREND REPORT Animal Instincts ...................

Meridian CEO Stuart Holliday on Ball Diplomacy and Beyond .............................

WASHINGTON SOCIAL DIARY

BOOK TALK Anand Giridharadas on

Inova Summit......................................................

his new book, "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" .............

Cafritz 'Welcome Back From Summer' Party...............

Innocents at Risk ..................................................

FYIDC

Hillwood Gala.....................................................

INSIDER'S GUIDE ........................................ SOCIAL CALENDAR ...................................

OVER THE MOON ...................................... Early Mountain Vineyards Wine Release Party ............. Lars Eller Stanley Cup Celebration ...........................

POLLYWOOD

Book Parties.......................................................62

Honoring the Ambassador of Japan ......................... Joan Hisaoka 'Make a Difference' Gala ......................

HOLLYWOOD ON THE POTOMAC ........ Meridian Ball 50th Annual Leadership Committee Reception .............................. Meridian Social Secretaries Reception ......................... Wolf Trap Ball ....................................................

HOME LIFE INSIDE HOMES Barry Dixon and Will Thomas .....

REAL ESTATE NEWS ................................... OPEN HOUSE ..............................................

EVENTS DC Southeast Developments ................... MY WASHINGTON Ambassador Dina Kawar......

COVER: Ambassador of Moldova Cristina Balan (Photo by Tony Powell) TOP FROM LEFT: FASHION: SUKEINA Black Cargo Dress $4675.00, sukeina.com; ZARA heart-shaped pendant earrings ($20), mixed chain necklace ($36), Zara, 1025 F Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20004, zara.com; UNCUFFED (Leather Accessories) black leather neck tie, Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Revolution. (Photo by Tony Powell); Jack Evans, Ted Leonsis, Mayor Muriel Bowser and Sheila Johnson at the ribbon cutting of Events DC's Entertainment and Sports Arena (Photo by Tony Powell). Will Thomas and Barry Dixon entrance (Photo by Gordon Beall). SAINT LAURENT oversized leopard print Georgette blouse ($3,590); saksfifthavenue.com. Viggo Mortensen in "Green Book" (Courtesy Photo).

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T H E I N S I D E R’S G U I D E TO P OW E R , P H I L A N T H R O PY, A N D SO C I E T Y S I N C E 1 9 9 1

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Nancy Reynolds Bagley EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Virginia Coyne SENIOR EDITOR

Kevin Chaffee MANAGING EDITOR

Catherine Trifiletti DEPUTY EDITOR & SENIOR LIFESTYLE EDITOR

Erica Moody CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Roland Flamini COLUMNISTS AND CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Janet Donovan, Steve Houk,Vicky Moon, Stacey Grazier Pfarr and Donna Shor ART DIRECTOR

Matt Rippetoe PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHER

Tony Powell CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Joy Asico, Ben Droz, Alfredo Flores, Larry French, Naku Mayo,Kyle Samperton, Erin Schaff, Jay Snap, Amanda Warden and Brian Wilson

PUBLISHER & CEO

Soroush Richard Shehabi SALES AND MARKETING REPRESENTATIVE

John Arundel BOOKKEEPERS

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Eddie Saleh,Triposs Mihail Iliev LEGAL

Mason Hammond Drake, Akerman, LLP EDITORIAL INTERNS

Lauryn Cantrell and Aaron Royce

FOUNDER

Vicki Bagley CREATIVE DIRECTOR EMERITUS (*)

J.C. Suarès CHAIRMAN, EXECUTIVE BOARD

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SO CLOSE TO THE ACTION.

ENTERTAINMENT AND SPORTS ARENA Congress Heights, DC

Fall 2018 |

Visit ESAontherise.com

EDITOR’S LETTER

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS

estate, Elway Hall. After taking a tour, we’re ready to move out to the country and adopt a similar lifestyle, even if our interiors couldn’t compare. If a temporary break from the city suits your style, the WL-Sponsored Middleburg Film Festival brings Hollywood to hunt country, this year with films featuring Maggie Gyllenhal and Viggo Mortensen We give you the details on how to relax with celebrities in cozy salons and saunter along the stables while discovering this year’s most anticipated films. Events DC, the public-private convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia, is having quite the year. We spotlight two new developments in DC sports that are revitalizing Southeast, the new Mystics stadium in Congress Heights and the soon-todebut development of RFK Stadium. A timely new book couldn’t be more relevant for our readership. This month’s book coverage includes an interview with the brilliant author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” Anand Giridharadas. The MSNBC political analyst investigates how the elite’s efforts to change the world may not be helping at all. We’re not sure about you, but our September calendar has been jam-packed and we are working overtime to cover balls, galas and parties for your viewing pleasure. This month you will find the WLsponsored Wolf Trap Ball, Joan Hisaoka ‘Make A Difference’ Gala, the Innocents at Risk Gala, Inova Summit and Hillwood Gala, Next month we will be front and center at the Ambassadors Ball, Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Inaugural Gala and the 50th Anniversary of the Meridian Ball!

Nancy R. Bagley Editor in Chief Readers wishing to contact Nancy Bagley can email her at nbagley@washingtonlife.com

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P H OTO BY OTO N Y P OW E L L

ur comprehensive Diplomatic Issue is in your hands and — as has been the case for quite a few years — you won’t find a better source for information about what we like to call “Embassy Row.” The ambassadors, numbering about 175, are at the summit of the diplomatic pyramid, followed by approximately 6,000 ministers, chargés d’affaires, consuls, permanent representatives, military attachés and deputies (among others) who populate a world that, while it might seem unusual to some, has been a core part of life in the nation’s capital since George Washington welcomed a handful of European envoys to a newly formed nation. The past three months, our diplomatic editor Roland Flamini focused on topics that would be of primary interest to our readers. The most important, of course, was to discover something about each and every one of the new ambassadors who have presented credentials over the past year. These include Germany’s first female envoy, Emily Haber and our cover star Cristina Balan of Moldova, who served as vice-president in charge of foreign relations in her country’s Democratic party. Scattered throughout this comprehensive mini-directory you’ll find a few additional articles that will surely be of interest to readers with regard to this important international community that lives, works and yes, plays among us. We highlight female ambassadors, the longest-serving envoys and give you an expert’s appraisal on what to do about Yemen, Libya and the fight against ISIS. And we interview Meridian International Center CEO and former United States Ambassador for Special Political Affairs at the United Nations about hosting foreign leaders ahead of one of the year’s most glamorous events, one centered around embassy dinner - the Meridian Ball, which will be held on Friday, October 12. In staying with the international theme we brought a couture wardrobe to the old residence of the Japanese ambassador on Massachusetts Avenue. The embassy’s warm staff members welcomed us inside the property’s Ippakutei tea house for the shoot, where traditional tea ceremonies are conducted for visitors and dignitaries. The tranquil backdrop juxtaposed with avant-garde fashion pieces made for a stunning final product. Speaking of beautiful backdrops, for Inside Homes we take a tour of acclaimed designer Barry Dixon and former Fox 5 anchor and now TTR Sotheby’s real estate agent Will Thomas’ historic Warrenton

FYIDC The Insider’s Guide to Washington

BY ERICA MOODY AND LAURYN CANTRELL

METRO MODERN HOME TOUR

ARCHITECTURAL STANDOUTS

GLENSTONE MUSEUM REOPENS

ARTISTIC EXPANSION

Potomac’s Glenstone Museum is reopening after a five-year expansion project that realizes the visionary dream of founders Mitch and Emily Wei Rales to merge art, architecture and landscape into “a seamless experience.” Glenstone opened in 2006 and now includes an additional 204,000-square-foot museum building called the Pavilions, designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer and Partners; an additional 130 acres of rolling meadows, woodlands, and streams, designed by Adam Greenspan and Peter Walker of PWP Landscape Architecture; an Arrival Hall, bookstore; and two cafés. Opens Oct. 4, tickets are free but you must sign up online, glenstone.org.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

SPOOKY SONGS

See the “spook”-tacular stylings of Howard and Alan Menken just in time for Halloween. Directed by Mark Brokaw and presented by Broadway Center Stage, the raucous musical about a megalomaniacal R&B singing carnivorous plant stars Megan Hilty, Josh Radnor, Tony Award winner James Monroe Iglehart and Lee Wilkof, who played Seymour in the original 1982 production, returning to the shop as Mr. Mushnik. Oct. 24 – 28; Eisenhower Theater,The Kennedy Center,Tickets: $89.00 – $199.00; http://www.kennedy-center.org.

VIKING SHIPS AT THE WHARF

AMERICAN EXPEDITION

Vikings will descend on Washington when The Draken Village pops up at The Wharf. Climb aboard the world’s largest Viking ship, Draken Harald Hårfagre, for ship tours and lively crew demonstrations to help you discover your Viking Spirit. Hosted in partnership with The Wharf and the Norwegian-American Chamber of Commerce, Mid-Atlantic Inc. and the Royal Norwegian Embassy, a number of free cultural events invite guests to relive the Viking discovery of the New World more than 1,000 years ago. Oct. 5-15; The Transit Pier at The Wharf; 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. (except for arrival day 4 – 6 p.m); drakenhh.com/washington.

NORDIC IMPRESSIONS

CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

A survey of major Nordic art spanning 200 years and presenting 53 artists from Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, as well as the islands of Åland, Faroe, and Greenland is at The Phillips Collection. The exhibition celebrates the diversity of Nordic art, focusing on centuries-old themes, deeply rooted in their respective cultures: light and darkness, inner life and exterior space, nature, folklore, women’s rights and social liberalism. Nordic Impressions displays the various techniques of how Nordic artists inspire each other across national boundaries, while honoring cultural traditions. Oct. 13-Jan. 13,Tickets: $12 for adults, $10 for students and visitors 62 and over; 18 and under free; phillipscollection.org.

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P H OTOS CO URT E SY

Explore the District’s modern homes with the annual DC Metro Modern Home Tour by the Modern Architecture & Design Society. The selfguided tour promises a fun day of open-house-style visits to at least eight houses for anyone who loves architecture, design and real estate. Participants include Braitman Design Studio, Gardner Architects, Travis Price Architects, McInturff Architects, Kmac Corp Design, Sagatov Design+Build and a unique home by veteran architect Angus MacDonald.” Oct. 6, $40, dcmetromodernhometour.com.

FYIDC | SOCIAL CALENDAR

N AT IONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY’S AMBASSADORS BALL The annual Ambassadors Ball honors the Washington Diplomatic Corps and members of Congress for their contributions to charitable and humanitarian efforts. Proceeds support treatment, research and other programs for patients or families affected by multiple sclerosis. The Anthem; 6 p.m.; black-tie; $600; sponsorships starts at $5,000; contact Amanda Herman (202)375-5620, Amanda.Herman@nmss.org.

KENNEDY KRIEGER INSTITUTE’S ‘WHATEVER IT TAKES: A TRIBUTE TO JUDY WOODRUFF’ Kennedy Krieger Institute’s inaugural event will raise funds to help improve the lives of children and young adults with brain disorders and other developmental disabilities through research, treatment and education. The Capitol Hilton; 6:00 p.m.; business attire; $500; sponsorships start at $5,000; contact Jennifer Doyle (443) 9234324, DoyleJ@KennedyKrieger.org.

COM MUNITY OF HOPE’S ‘NIGHT OF HOPE’ Guests will enjoy one of the best views of the nation’s capital as they join Community of Hope in its efforts to end homelessness and improve health for underserved families throughout the District. 101 Constitution Ave NW; 6:30 p.m.; business or cocktail attire; $85; sponsorships start at $1,000; contact Alexis Squire (202) 4077760, asquire@cohdc.org.

MER IDIAN BALL Meridian International Center is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its annual ball, which raises funds for global leadership and public diplomacy initiatives. Guests at the last of the city’s grand balls will gather at pre-ball dinners at ambassadorial residences or Meridian’s White-Meyer House before congregating for dessert and dancing at Meridian. Meridian International Center; 9 p.m.; black-tie; $750; sponsorships start at $5,000; contact Olivia Dorieux (202) 939-5892, odorieux@meridian.org.

COL LEGE SUCCESS FOUNDATION – D.C.’S BREAKFAST FUNDRAISER Costco Wholesale co-founder Jim Sinegal will

offer the keynote address at The College Success Foundation’s breakfast fundraiser, and emphasize the importance of the non-profit organization’s work to provide underserved and local lowincome students with the academic, social, emotional and ﬁnancial support they need to graduate from college and thrive in life. Marriott Washington Wardman Park Hotel; 7:30 a.m.; sponsorships start at $2,500; contact (202) 207-1817, events@ collegesuccessfoundation.org. Rep. Donna Edwards and Rep. Ryan Costello at the 2017 Ambassadors Ball

D.C . CHAMBER OF COMMERCE’S CHOICE AWARDS & GALA Join event chairmen Vincent B. Orange Sr., Marie C. Johns, Pedro Alfonso and Carl Hairston at an awards ceremony that celebrates achievements, innovation and success in the greater Washington Metropolitan area. Marriott Marquis; 5 p.m.; black-tie; $450; sponsorships start at $3,000; contact Janelle Morris (202) 8214819, jmorriss@dcchamber.org.

LIV ING CLASSROOMS FOUNDATION’S ‘NIGHT AT THE POINT’ With a live performance by the James Brown Dance Party, guests will soon be on their feet dancing to support the innovative hands-on education and job-training programs provided by Living Classrooms Foundation. The nonprofit organization primarily focuses on youth and young adults living in high-risk environments throughout the region. Ja mes Creek Marina; 7 p.m.; casual or festive attire; $120; sponsorships start at $2,500; contact Thara Taylor thara@livingclassrooms.org.

WHI TE HAT GALA The casino-themed event is held annually as an opportunity for the cyber security community to raise funds for Children’s National Health System. Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium; 6:30 p.m.; black-tie optional; $500; sponsorships start at $2,500; contact Kelsey Presswood (301) 565-8532, kpresswood@ childrensnational.org

JDR F HOPE GALA Join event chairs Tamara and Steve Pann in their efforts to support JDRF

and raise critical funds to progressively reduce the impact of type 1 diabetes on people’s lives. National Building Museum; 6 p.m.; black-tie; $500; sponsorship starts at $5,000; contact Stephanie Stuckey, sstuckey@jdrf.org.

THU RGOOD MARSHALL COLLEGE FUND AWARDS GALA As the nation’s largest organization exclusively representing publicly-supported Historically Black Colleges and Universities and predominately black institutions, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund is a vital resource in the K-12 and higher education space. Proceeds from the gala will support its scholarship program. Washington Marriott Wardman Park, 5 p.m.; blacktie; $500; contact George F. Spencer (202) 7477188, george.spencer@tmcf.org.

SAVE THE DATE :/ 6321625(' (9(176

NOVEMBER Fight Night NOVEMBER Knock Out Abuse Gala NOVEMBER Inova Honors Dinner NOVEMBER Lab School Gala NOVEMBER International Student House of Washington Global Leadership Awards Dinner NOVEMBER Capital Caring’s ‘Passion for Caring’ Gala NOVEMBER Mentor Foundation USA’s “In Light of Youth” Beneﬁt Dinner

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P H OTO BY TO N Y P OW E L L

OCTOBER

POLLYWOOD The Nexus of Politicsďš? Hollywoodďš? Media and Diplomacy | Meridian events, Michelin Guide Reception and more!

Japanese Ambassador Shinsuke Sugiyama, Reina Sugiyama and Yoko Sugiyama at a dinner in his honor at the Museum of Women in the Arts. (Photo by Ben Droz)

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pollywood

Host Roy Pfautch with Japanese Ambassador Shinsuke J. Sugiyama and Yoko Sugiyama

w l e x cl u si v e

HONORING THE AMBASSADOR OF JAPAN National Museum of Women in the Arts | PHOTOS BY BEN DROZ

Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Lan Chao

BIPARTISAN BASH: International trade consultant Roy Pfautch lives mostly in Tokyo now, so he isn’t entertaining here as he did in the Reagan and Geoge H.W. Bush years when his legendary Christmas party featured a place-carded dinner for 600 guests and a mystery VIP Santa Claus from the White House or Cabinet, revealed just before dessert. He occasionally reclaims his “super host” title whenever a new Japanese ambassador comes to town, which was the case at a spectacular fête honoring Shinsuke Sugiyama and his wife Yoko at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Nineteen senators and 18 representatives from both sides of the aisle, Cabinet secretaries and Supreme Court justices were spotted amid the towering floral arrangements before a special performance by Metropolitan Opera tenor Russell Thomas. “It was a happiness,” Pfautch said, “that so many from a wide range of persuasions joined together to welcome my friends of over 20 years back to Washington.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer and Rep. Andy Barr

View all the photos at www.washingtonlife.com

Rep. Ed Royce, Marie Royce, Aniko Gaal Schott and Rep. Joe Wilson

Sen. Susan Collins

Bonnie McElveen-Hunter

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joni Ernst

Sen. Shelly Moore Capito and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke

Princess Saba and Prince Ermias Selassie with Bill Nitze 18

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Sachiko Kuno

Mark Lowham

Vadim Nikitine and Kristin Ehrgood

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Cedric Brown and Ron Herman

WL SPONSORED

Bob Hisaoka and Dana Hines

JOAN HISAOKA ‘MAKE A DIFFERENCE’ GALA Omni Shoreham Hotel PHOTOS BY GEVAR BONHAM AND CHRIS SPIELMANN

Tony and Annette Nader

J. Stephen and Kathryn Jones

THE POWER OF HEALING Eleven years after its debut, the Joan Hisaoka “Make a Difference” Gala raised a remarkable $1.93 million for programs providing support to individuals living with cancer, adding up to more than $14 million since the event’s inception. Bob Hisaoka founded the gala after his sister Joan lost her battle with cancer in 2008. An incredible 85 percent of event proceeds went to two standout beneficiaries: Life with Cancer, the educational and emotional support program of the Inova Schar Cancer Institute, and the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, an independent cancer support center based in Washington. Sponsors included: Tom and Alice Blair, Dick and Bonnie Patterson, Katherine and David Bradley, Richard Kay, Ted and Lynn Leonsis, Mark and Sarah Kimsey, The Peterson Family Foundation, FedEx, Veatch Family Charitable Fund and Shapiro, Lifschitz and Schram.

Earl and Amanda Stafford

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Jim and Mai Abdo

Mark and Brenda Moore

Eric Ziebold

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POLLYWOOD | HOLLYWOOD ON THE POTOMAC

ALL THE PRESIDENTS’ KIN The White House Historical Association invites presidential descendants to Washington. B Y J A N E T D O N O VA N

t was one of the largest gatherings ever of presidential descendants. More than 50 relatives of former presidents came together at the Kennedy Center in late August for a special reception as part of the White House Historical Association’s four-day Presidential Sites Summit. We spoke to five of those descendents, who also participated in a panel discussion led by Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein, and asked them to share their recollections. Susan Ford Bales, daughter of President Gerald Ford and Betty Ford, told us that her first memory of the White House was the staff being sworn in at the East Room. She remembers clearly how shocked the nation was over President Nixon’s resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Her father’s pardon of his predecessor, she said, probably cost Ford the next election. “Everybody thought he had a deal with President Nixon, [but] it was the right thing to do. My dad chose to put America first.” On her mother’s openness about breast cancer: “If you look at women’s health care before Betty Ford and after Betty Ford, I think we helped probably thousands and thousands of people that are extremely grateful to her.” Massee McKinley is the great-great nephew of 25th President William McKinley and great-great grandson (on his maternal side) of Grover Cleveland, who was the 22nd and 24th president, the only commander-inchief to serve two non-consecutive terms. “His wife had the famous little story that when they were defeated the first time, she told the White House staff: ‘Take care of the China, we’ll be back in four years.’ And they were back in four years.” President McKinley was assassinated by a disgruntled anarchist in 1901 in Buffalo N.Y. “The nation was shocked because he was beloved by so many people,” McKinley said, pointing out that “they didn’t have Secret

Massee McKinley, Tweed Roosevelt, Susan Ford Bales Lynda Johnson Robb and Clifton Daneils. (Photo by Matthew D’Agostino for theWhite House Historical Association)

Service then.” “Both of them had a very good sense of humor,” said Clifton Daniels of his grandparents President Harry S. Truman and Bess Truman. “He was a lot of fun. My grandmother was the same way.” As an example, Daniels refers to a letter Bess Truman penned to her husband in the early 1920s, when he was at the National Guard Training Camp.“She wrote that she got up at the crack of dawn just so she could see their neighbors leave on their vacation because she knew that the neighbor was going be in her pajamas and she wanted to see Mrs. Smith in her knickers. Her exact phrase was, ‘I wouldn’t miss seeing Mrs. Smith in her knickers for a hundred dollars.’’ With a name like Roosevelt, we doubted there wasn’t a question that Tweed Roosevelt, great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, hadn’t been asked before. So, we asked him to pose the questions: “I’ll tell you questions I wouldn’t like to answer,” he said, adding that one he gets frequently is “did you know him?” His ancestor died in

1920, Tweed Roosevelt said, adding that he’s “always a little bit amazed that people think I might have known him. “It happens all the time that people say, ‘Oh, you’re a Roosevelt. How are you related?’ And then they tell me Roosevelt stories. I just smile and say ‘yes’ and ‘that’s very nice’ and ‘what an interesting story’ and so on.” Is it a burden having the last name Roosevelt? ”It’s both. It’s a burden and it’s not. It gets me lots of privileges and therefore I have obligations. I mean it’s very hard when you’re young and maybe even when you’re old, because the only reason people are interested in you is because you are a descendant of somebody.” Lynda Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson, shared why her father decided not to run for re-election. “That was an awesome decision, but his health was not that good and he felt he had done everything he could to get peace [in Vietnam].”

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POLLYWOOD

Ariana Austin Makonnen and Joel Makonnen

Stuart Holliday and Chief of Protocol Sean Lawler Catherine Stevens and Finnish Ambassador Kirsti Kauppi

WL SPONSORED

Rep. Francis Rooney

50TH ANNUAL MERIDIAN BALL LEADERSHIP COMMITTEE RECEPTION

Rep. Debbie Dingell and Artur Orkisz

Blair House | PHOTOS BY BEN DROZ

Gwen Holliday, Ann Stock, Toni Gore and Lee Satterfield

HALF A CENTURY OF GREATNESS: Through its mission of promoting global leadership, Meridian International Center is known for its ability to draw a wide range of thoughtful, intelligent and powerful Washingtonians to its annual gala. To celebrate the upcoming 50th year anniversary of the landmark event, newly appointed Chief of Protocol Sean Lawler welcomed ball committee members, ambassadors and guests to an intimate reception at Blair House. Both Lawler and Meridian president Stuart Holliday offered remarks. VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Annabel Kempe and Francesca Craig

Laura Wills, Carlos Elizondo and Debbie Schiff

White House Social Secretary Rickie Niceta, Amanda Downes, Diane Flamini, Caitlin O’Connor and Severine de Lartigue

WL SPONSORED

SOCIAL SECRETARIES RECEPTION Meridian International Center | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Natalie Jones and Dana Al Marashi

A PARTY FOR THE PLANNERS: Anyone who understands the innerworkings of an embassy knows that the operation is anchored by the ambassador’s appointed social secretary. These individuals are tasked with maintaining guest lists for official events, planning relevant programming and keeping their bosses abreast of the most important happenings around town. In Washington, they are soon recognized as keepers of the gate for the city’s prominent diplomatic events. Current and former occupants of these key positions gathered at Meridian House to be honored for their service and, most likely, swap a few war stories as well. FACES IN THE CROWD Social secretaries from the British, French and Spanish embassies, as well as the White House, were in attendance.

Meirina Hutabarat, Lisa Barry and Carmen Davis

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Richard and Evelyn Bynum with Wolf Trap President and CEO Arvind Manocha

Andre Pienaar with Ball Co-chairs Teresa Carlson and Angela and Don Irwin

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Sir Kim and Lady Darroch, with Tina and Gary Mather

WL SPONSORED

Briona and Sean Desmond with Heather Louise Finch

WOLF TRAP BALL Filene Center Stage PHOTOS BY VITHAYA PHONGSAVAN TONY POWELL & TINA DELA ROSA

Chip and Rep. Barbara Comstock

Tyree Webster, Gabrielle Webster, Rynthia Rost and Roy Joseph

BRITISH INVASION Nearly every September the Wolf Trap Ball shatters another fundraising record, and this year was no exception, with 900 guests helping to raise a record $1.7 million. Ball co-chairs Teresa Carlson and Don and Angela Irwin led the effort in support of the Wolf Trap Foundation’s national arts and education programs. The peril of a rain-out by Hurricane Florence never materialized, but just in case, chandeliers fashioned from 100 oversized plaid umbrellas hung from the rafters, just a sampling of the spectacular Britishthemed decor for the event, for which Sir Kim Darroch, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the U.S., served as honorary chair. “The night wouldn’t have been possible without the partnership of Ambassador Darroch and the British Embassy, who were instrumental in helping to create a strikingly beautiful celebration of the thriving arts and culture of Britain,” said Wolf Trap President and CEO Arvind Manocha.

Lt. Governor of Virginia Justin Fairfax with Dorothy McAuliffe and former Governor Terry McAuliffe

The ‘80s tribute band, “The Legwarmers,” performed after dinner

Raluca Monet and Loren Hudziak

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Hillary and Tom Baltimore 25

POLLYWOOD

David Rubeinstein and Dr. Kurt Newman

Kay Kendall and Jack Davies

Jeff Bezos

Ted Leonsis

ECONOMIC CLUB DINNER WITH JEFF BEZOS Washington Hilton | PHOTOS BY BEN DROZ ALL BUSINESS: The Economic Club of Washington’s “Milestone Celebration Dinner,” attended by more than 1,500 people, marked The Carlyle Group founder and Kennedy Center Chairman David Rubenstein’s 10th year as president of the organization. Rubenstein led a discussion with special guest Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post. The big question on guests’ minds: will Amazon open a second headquarters in the D.C. area? Bezos was non-commital. “We will announce a decision before the end of this year,” he said.

Annie Totah

Gina Adams

VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Felix Sanchez Isabella Castillo and Guy Ecker

Esai Morales and Maria Teresa Kumar WL SPONSORED

Gloria Rodriguez and Iris Argueta

NOCHE DE GALA The Mayflower Hotel | PHOTOS BY ALFREDO FLORES ARTISTIC ACCESS: Singers, songwriters, actors and advocates were recognized at the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts’ annual Noche de Gala. Robert Rodriguez’s El Rey Network received the Raul Julia Award for Excellence in celebration of its five-year anniversary, and actors Erika Ender, Diego Tinoco, Isaac Lee and Alanna Ubach were honored. Plenty of politicians attended as well, including guest speakers Reps. Tony Cardenas and Linda Sanchez. NHFA was founded in 1997 to advance the presence of Latinos in the media, telecommunications, and entertainment industries, and awards scholarships to foster emerging talent.

Norma Cardenas and Rep. Tony Cardenas 26

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Roland Ramirez, Delia Garcia and Johnny Yataco

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MIDDLEBURG FILM FEST

MOVIES IN MIDDLEBURG Celebrities including Viggo Mortensen, Jason Reitman & Maggie Gyllenhaal will be at the sixth annual festival. BY ERICA MOODY

undance, Venice, Telluride, Toronto, Cannes and...Middleburg? The sleepy Virginia town has historically been known more for horses than Hollywood-style events, but for the past six years, Tinseltown elite have descended on the hunt country habitat in October for an unexpectedly star-studded film festival. Due to its relaxed location and distance from Hollywood strivers, the Middleburg Film Festival lacks the pretensions and long lines of other film festivals. No red carpets are seen. Guests gather instead for farmto-table dinners prepared by award-winning chefs, enjoy “wine and conversation” with filmmakers at local vineyards, and engage in intimate fireside chats in the Salamander Resort’s cozy library. Last year, Greta Gerwig, Dee Rees and James Ivory were there. In 2016, director Damien Chazelle and actress Emma Stone came to preview “La La Land” — both ended up winning Oscars. This year’s lineup may be the most star-studded yet. Among the big names confirmed are actors Viggo Mortensen and Maggie Gyllenhaal; director/screenwriter Jason Reitman, director Peter Farrelly and Grammy Award winning songwriter Diane Warren. The buzzworthy films being shown include “Roma” (directed by Academy Award winning director Alfonso Cuarón),“Green Book” (directed by Farrelly and starring Mortensen and Mahershala Ali), “The Front Runner” (directed by Reitman and starring Hugh Jackman) and “The Favourite” (directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and featuring Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz). Coca-Cola is the presenting sponsor, and Gary Mather and Christina Co Mather will serve as honorary chairs. Executive Director Susan Koch, herself an award-winning documentary filmmaker, is looking forward to “another year of terrific films from all over the globe. Especially in these divisive times, films provide a powerful way to broaden our understanding of the world and one another,” she says. When she and Black Entertainment Television co-founder Sheila Johnson imagined the festival in 2013, it was to give cinephiles a look at the best films of the year and a chance to gather for thoughtful conversation. “We hope our filmgoers will also get a chance to experience the stunning setting and warm hospitality of Middleburg, the place I’ve called home for the last 20 years,” Johnson says, pleased that her festival has become a world-class cinematic destination. The Middleburg Film Festival runs Oct. 18-21 at various locations in Middleburg, Va. Visit middleburgfilm.org for details and to purchase tickets.

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James Ivory and Janet Maslin in conversation at Salamander Resort at the 2017 festival

“The Front Runner” with Hugh Jackman

“The Favourite” starring Emma Stone

Events will be held at Boxwood and Greenhill wineries, among other locations.

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NEW AMBASSADORS FOR

% ',%2+-2+ ;360( L BY ROLAND FLAMINI

et’s face it: Rarely, if ever, has it been tougher to be a foreign ambassador in Washington. For example, an important part of the ambassador’s job is to protect his or her government from surprises, but President Donald Trump’s unpredictable approach to governing makes that difficult, if not impossible. In their ongoing effort to determine what rabbit the current occupant of the White House will pull out of his hat, embassies pore over presidential tweets like psychics studying tea leaves—and so far, the psychics have a better success rate. Long standing alliances are thrown out the window; friends are now foes, and foes are now BFFs. German Ambassador Emily Haber has it right when she says that her recent arrival “coincides with a difficult phase.” That said, diplomacy was already struggling to be reimagined for a changing world before Trump turned international affairs upside down. The British writer and diplomat Sir Harold Nicholson once listed the qualities of the ideal diplomat as “truth, accuracy, calm, patience, good temper, modesty and loyalty.” To those must now be added nimble fingers in using social media—an indispensable diplomatic tool to cope with the challenges of round-the-clock news and instant reaction. But that’s only part of the ongoing discussion on how shifting international strategic priorities are impacting the diplomatic profession. Camilo Reyes, the now-departed Colombian ambassador and a seasoned diplomat, argued in a recent conversation that countryto-country relations are no longer diplomacy’s main function. These days, they’re only one aspect, as the demarcation among foreign policy, advocacy, celebrities, diplomacy and even philanthropy has become increasingly blurred. “There are new actors in the international community,” Reyes said. “Powerful NGOs, multinational corporations and a very powerful new genre of enterprises.

If you think of Google, or Microsoft, or Apple, with larger revenue than the gross domestic product of numerous countries. Facebook has a stronger political impact than most countries.” A shift in contextual conditions requires the modern diplomat to address issues beyond diplomacy. Trade, environment, culture, immigration, security and health are now an integral part of his or her job list. All of which may help explain why almost two-thirds of the new ambassadorial appointees who have presented their credentials to President Trump in the past 12 months are not career diplomats. They include a retired appeals court judge from Nigeria, the former vice-president (twice) of Colombia, the president (three times) of the Pacific island state of Kiribati, a handful of politicians and several economists and business executives, such as the new ambassador of Argentina (see below). The shift away from career ambassadors gets a lot of flak in some capitals, but its defenders argue that they are following the U.S. model of rewarding party supporters and political figures. “In the U.S. there is a concept of political appointees,” says Cristina Balan, newly arrived ambassador of Moldova, and herself a politician and business woman. “Even in the State Department, when a new administration comes in, people in key positions are political appointees.” Most of the new arrivals have one thing in common. They are, or claim to be, a phone call away from the person in charge —usually the president. They can, if need be, circumvent the bureaucracy and get faster answers or decisions. In today’s rapidly moving world, that could be an advantage in the quick resolution of a crisis, or even avoiding serious incidents. Anyway, that’s the conventional wisdom, and listed below are its most recent practitioners. >>

PORTRAITS BY TONY POWELL

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MOLDOVA Cristina Balan is the first woman ambassador from one of the countries of the Eastern Partnership, the group of former Soviet states associated with, but not yet members of, the European Union. A small country wedged between Romania and Ukraine, Moldova lives in fear of a Russian landgrab; and indeed Russia still occupies part of the country, the way it does in Georgia and Ukraine. Balan warned recently of “mounting pressure and destabilizing threats from Russia.” Balan was vice-president in charge of foreign relations in Moldova’s Democratic Party before coming to Washington earlier this year. Before entering politics she was an economist and most recently worked in Moldova for the accounting 29 firm of Price Waterhouse.

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BAHAMAS: SIDNEY S COLLIE has

been successively— and sometimes concurrently—a school teacher, lawyer, ordained Baptist minister, politician, parliamentarian, government minister, and is now ambassador. As chairman of the Free National Movement he led the party, long in opposition, to an overwhelming victory in the 2017 election. In November, he presented his credentials to President Trump as chief of the Bahamas Mission in Washington. His book of poetry, “Island Breezes,” has been a best-seller in the Bahamas.

CAMBODIA: CHUM SOUNRY, the new

envoy from the Kingdom of Cambodia—home of the historic Ankor Wat temples—served previously in Washington from 19951998. Other highlights of his long career in diplomacy include ambassadorships in Russia and Australia (and simultaneously New Zealand), and lately under-secretary of state at the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC : MARTIAL NDOUBOU, who presented his letters of credence on September 17, is the new ambassador of the Central African Republic (CAR). Prior to his move to Washington, Ndoubou was deputy chief of mission in Paris. The CIA’s no-holds-barred country profile calls the Central African Republic “a source, transit, and destination of children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking, women subjected to forced prostitution, and adults subjected to forced labor; most victims appear to be CAR citizens exploited within the country.” According to recent reports, CAR is also the spearhead of an escalating effort by Russia to increasing its influence and activities in Africa.

CHAD: NGOTE GALI KOUTOU is

not a career diplomat, but he is widely assumed to have a direct line to Chad’s President Idriss Deby. A senior government official, he was the president’s chief of staff before coming to Washington. Earlier, he was director general of Chad’s national petroleum company—a key government appointment not only because oil provides 60 percent of the country’s export revenue, but also because it is widely believed that the oil sector is under the direct control of the president’s wife, Hinda, who approves all senior appointments.

CHILE: When he was named Chile’s new ambassador to Washington, ALFONSO SILVA NAVARRO held the senior post of undersecretary at the ministry of foreign affairs. A career diplomat, he has previously been ambassador to India, Canada and Jamaica. He served in the nation’s capital earlier in his career, and his official biography mentions that he has degrees from Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. COLOMBIA: Journalist and politician FRANCISCO SANTOS CALDERÓN also known as PACHO SANTOS belongs to

a Colombian political dynasty. His great-uncle was president of Colombia, as was one of his cousins, the outgoing Juan Manuel Santos. An alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin, Santos himself was President Alvaro Uribe’s vice-president for two terms from 2002-2010. Santos is also Colombia’s most famous kidnap victim. In 1990, he was abducted by the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and remained in captivity for several months. The experience led him to form an organization called Fondación Pais Libre (Free Country Foundation) to help Colombia’s many kidnap

victims. Largely at his urging, Colombia formed special, anti-kidnap police units to combat the recurring threat, and the number of kidnappings eventually began to decline. Colombian media commented that the appointment of a high level ambassador to Washington reflects President Ivan Duque’s interest in keeping the Trump administration focused on Colombia’s drug and insurgent problems, and on Latin America in general.

COSTA RICA: Medical doctor FERNANDO LLORCA CASTRO, who presented his credentials on Sept. 17, will no doubt watch with interest the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Obama’s Affordable Care program. Costa Rica’s new envoy has been involved in the area of socialized medicine for years. In 2017, he was president of his nation’s Social Security system, probably the most advanced health and social service program in Central and South America. Prior to that, Llorca was minister of health from 2014-2017. He got his medical degree in Costa Rica, and then spent 12 years in Europe where he graduated from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and was employed as a registered medical analyst in the Department of Work and Pensions in the U.K. In Spain, he got his Master’ degree in Barcelona, a diploma in political science from Madrid’s Complutense University, and has also worked for international private insurance companies. CÔTE D’IVOIRE (IVORY COAST): This is HAIDARA MAMADOU’S second Washington assignment: he was previously the embassy’s economic counselor. He returns to a diplomatic appointment after three terms as president of the Cercle Liberal de Côte d’Ivoire, a think tank with ties to the governing party, and a concurrent post as chairman of Sonitra, a Côte d’Ivoire infrastructure company.

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ARGENTINA When Fernando Oris de Roa presented his credentials to President Trump the president greeted him with shouts of “Lemons, lemons, lemons.” The president had read his brief: the importation of Argentinian lemons was the subject of a prolonged trade dispute, and Argentina’s new ambassador was a wealthy agri-business executive who had once owned San Miguel, the world’s largest lemon growing company. Among his other ventures was Avex, a poultry company with a capacity to kill and process 75,000 chickens a day. De Roa was heading a lithium company in 2018, among other ventures, when President Mauricio Macri personally picked him as ambassador to the U.S. He holds a Master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

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MADAME AMBASSADOR HERE TO STAY FEMALE ENVOYS SOLIDIFY THEIR STATUS IN WASHINGTON.

n 2013, there were 27 foreign women ambassadors serving in Washington. It was the largest number ever, and was attributed to the “Hillary Effect.” The fact that the American secretary of state was a woman, commentators said, had encouraged foreign governments to send women ambassadors to the United States. Hillary Clinton is gone from Foggy Bottom, but women ambassadors continue to be assigned to Washington. The gender shift, while modest, is both widely accepted in the international community, and here to stay. Currently serving in the nation’s capital are 24 female envoys from countries of all sizes and from every continent. They constitute about 15 percent of the total, but clearly not all ambassadorships are of equal weight. Appointments from more powerful states have more impact than others, which is why the relatively recent addition of women envoys from Germany and Sweden in Europe, and Jordan in the Arab world represents a quality leap in the search for a more balanced gender representation at the top of the diplomatic ladder. Berlin has chosen to appoint Emily Haber, a senior diplomat, as the new German ambassador at a time when U.S.-German relations are in shambles. “My arrival, admittedly, coincides with a difficult phase,” the new ambassador says with considerable understatement. “I will work on our relations, reaching out to policy makers and the wonderful people across the U.S.” She is Germany’s first female envoy to Washington and her arrival sends several signals to both Europe and to the Trump administration, which is not known for its enlightened views on feminism. Ambassador Haber led the German delegation in the talks leading to the Iran nuclear treaty, which Trump wants the Germans to dump, following his lead, but

Berlin is sticking to its commitment. Haber played a key role in Germany’s immigration policy: Trump says it had ruined German culture. There are also trade issues, a dispute over German defense spending, or lack of it, and threatened U.S. tariffs on German automobiles. Leading the trend is Sweden where the government has a gender parity employment policy, although Swedish Ambassador Karin Olofsdotter says being outnumbered has its advantages. Being a woman ambassador “always helps,” she said recently. “There are fewer of us, we stand out in a crowd, and then if you’re serious it’s just an advantage. Of course, if all ambassadors were women, it would be great to be a man.” As they took their place alongside mostly male ambassadors, many women diplomats made history by just being here. With the exception of Jordanian Ambassador Dina Kawar, whose predecessor was also a woman, most, like Haber, are their country’s first female envoys. The development is now a hot topic, with academic studies of the impact of senior women diplomats on international affairs and the gender angle. According to an article entitled “Women in Diplomacy” in the academic journal American Diplomacy, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Female negotiators have been reported to throw men off balance in their negotiating strategy, as men feel as though they are arguing with their wife.” Anne Anderson, until 2017 Ireland’s ambassador to Washington 2017, took the female view in describing how she felt at some diplomatic meetings: “At some subliminal level,” she recalled, “there was the sense that this was a man’s job.” Asked how she thought a woman ambassador’s approach to the job differed from a man in the same job, one female snapped, “I’ve no idea: I’ve never been a male

ambassador.” But Thelma Phillip-Browne, the ambassador of St Kitts & Nevis put it differently: diplomats “are really taking the message of our country to another country in a sensitive way,” she said, “in a way that is receptive, and palatable, and diplomatic. Who better to do that than a woman?” Reka Szemerkenyi, a former Hungarian ambassador to Washington and now executive vice-president of the DC-based Center for European Policy Analysis, says women soften the hard edge of discussion. “Women’s approach to tension and conflict is quite different from men’s,” she says. “Women’s great asset (in negotiations) is the ability to think a little softer, easier, not to think of something right way as an issue of conflict.” As ambassadors, women are more willing than their male counterparts “to give up short term gains - to make tactical concessions – to achieve a strategic success.” It must be said that all the women ambassadors interviewed for the present article said that they had never experienced any discrimination as they go about the business of representing their country in the United States, least of all from male diplomatic colleagues. “I have not yet encountered a situation in which I was challenged as a female diplomat,” says Cristina Balan, the ambassador of Moldova. To make her point she added that when she presented her credentials, “President Trump was actually quite thoughtful and engaging.” Stereotypes persist however, and most women ambassadors have a list of remarks and situations that provoke undiplomatic thoughts. Reka Szemerkemyi recalled the first time she was asked at a conference who took care of her children. “I went home and asked my husband whether he was ever asked at work who takes care of the children.”

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GERMANY “This is a homecoming for me, having attended school in D.C. and having been back frequently. My arrival, admittedly, coincides with a difficult phase. I will work on our relations, reaching out to policy makers and the wonderful people across the U.S.” So says Emily Haber, Germany’s first woman ambassador to Washington, addressing head-on President Trump’s less than warm relations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Haber is a career diplomat (and the daughter of one) whose most recent area of responsibility was as a top member of a security and migration task force at the height of Europe’s troublesome refugee crisis. She has also been state secretary, the most senior diplomat, at the German ministry of foreign affairs, and earlier served two terms in Moscow. She arrives in Washington amid European concerns that the United States has “gone all wobbly” (to use Margaret Thatcher’s phrase) on fundamental precepts of the longstanding Western alliance.

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CLERIC WHO WENT ROGUE WAS WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT VATICAN REPRESENTATIVE IN WASHINGTON WARNED OF CARDINAL’S MISCONDUCT.

Former Archbishop of WashingtonTheodore McCarrick, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Pope Francis

he Italian cleric Carlo Maria Viganò who wrote the letter calling on Pope Francis to resign was a disgruntled former papal nuncio, or Vatican ambassador, one of a large network posted around the world. Viganò was assigned to Washington in 2011. The United States had diplomatic relations with the Holy See in its earliest days, broke them off in the 1860s, but renewed them in 1984 largely because President Ronald Reagan saw Polish-born Pope John Paul II as a strong ally in his campaign against the Soviet Union. Since then, papal nuncios have occupied the nunciature—or embassy—on Massachusetts Avenue in northwest Washington, and a U.S. ambassador to the Holy See has resided in Rome, the present one being Calista Gingrich, wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The current nuncio is Archbishop Christophe Pierre, who is French. He came to Washington in 2016 to replace Viganò who was yanked back to the Vatican in disgrace, and, it turns out, has spent the last two years plotting his counter attack on Pope Francis and the senior Catholic hierarchy. Some question exactly why the Vatican needs a permanent diplomatic representative to the United States. Critics of the existing bilateral agreement point out that other major religions, for example Islam, don’t have diplomatic representation in the nation’s capital, and some argue that the nuncio’s presence runs contrary to

the separation of church and state. But as a sovereign state the Holy See (dipspeak for the Vatican) has had a diplomatic service since the Middle Ages, and today has relations with more than 100 countries, including Israel, Egypt, Russia and the Arab Emirates. Many Catholic priests pursue diplomatic careers in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See until they retire, with former nuncios often being made cardinals. In reality, Archbishop Viganòs recent action has less to do with his worldly diplomatic assignment as representative of the Holy See in the U.S. and more with the papal nuncio’s other official role, which is his ecclesiastical mission to keep Rome informed about goings on in the local church—in this case, the American episcopate. For example, the nuncio is charged with talent spotting the local priests he believes would make good bishops. (Part of Viganòs grievance was that Pope Francis, and Pope Benedict XVI before him, rejected his suggestions, presumably as too conservative). It was in the exercise of this second role that Viganò claims in his memo that he warned not one pontiff, but two, of allegations against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, of homosexuality with seminarians as well as pedophilia with boys over a long period. There wasn’t exactly a rush from either pontiff to deny his claims, but the skeptics see the Viganò memo in the context of the current outburst of trench warfare by ultraconservatives against

Pope Francis because of his conciliatory tone on remarriage and homosexuality, and his emphasis on issues like immigration and climate change. Backstabbing and infighting within the highest ranks of the church are nothing new in its history. What is new is that modern media give the wider Catholic community a ringside seat in real time. “It’s as if the Borgias and the Medicis had Twitter accounts,” says church historian Christopher Bellitto of Kean University, in Union, N.J. Also, Viganò has a history of whistle blowing: it’s what got him banished—as he saw it—to Washington in the first place. As senior administrator of the Vatican State he had complained once too often about corruption and inefficiency in his department and was moved to Washington, where he fell into the embrace of American Catholic conservatives. Now, Viganò has accused of complicity many of the same past and present officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State he had held responsible for his earlier removal from Rome— which is why a strong whiff of score-settling hangs over his real or invented revelations. If nothing else, the episode further underscores the harm the persistent sex crisis in the Roman Catholic Church is doing to its credibility and moral authority—and, not incidentally, to the reputation of the Holy See’s diplomacy. The Vatican is justified in claiming a place in the international order, but it also needs to put its house in order.

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CYPRUS: MARIOS LYSSIOTIS must know an unsoluble problem when he sees it. The Cypriot career diplomat worked in the government’s Cyprus Question Division for three years, from 2001-1003, without coming up with an answer. The issue of how to peacefully reunite the divided island with Greek and Turkish Cypriots living in separate enclaves, with U.N. peacekeepers in the middle to keep them apart, has defied a solution since 1974. Lyssiotis has also served as Cypriot ambassador to Austria and to France, and most recently was advisor to the ministry of defense. ECUADOR: FRANCISCO CARRIÓN MENA is a seasoned diplomat who has at separate times filled the government posts of deputy foreign minister and foreign minister. According to his embassy’s website, he has also been Ecuador’s ambassador to Spain and permanent representative at the United Nations. What the website does not mention is that he resigned in 2011 in disagreement with President Rafael Correa’s policies. In 2017, President Lenin Moreno appointed Carrión ambassador to Washington, and he delivered his letters of credence to President Trump earlier this year.

MADAGASCAR Aside from having the longest name in the Washington diplomatic community, Eric Andriamihajamananirina Robson has business degrees from the University of South Carolina, and comes to the diplomatic service of his island on the southeast coast of Africa from the Economic Development Board of Madagascar, where he had risen to the post of director. He represents one of the poorest African countries, much dependent on foreign aid, with a poverty rate of over 90 percent, and chronically unsettled politics. The most recent coup –admittedly bloodless–was in 2009, and the opposition recently tried and failed to impeach the president who was accused of trying to rig the election laws to disqualify his rivals. As a result, the presidential elections in November will have 43 candidates, including two former presidents, one incumbent, and two former prime ministers.

ESTONIA: This is JONATAN VSEVIOV’s third

Washington assignment. He was third secretary at the embassy from 2005-2008, and returned briefly from 2013-2014. He then moved to the Estonian defense ministry, specializing in his country’s relations with NATO. The Alliance’s cyber security operations are located in Talinn, the Estonian capital. Before his most recent move to Washington, Ambassador Vseviov, who got his Master’s degree at Georgetown University, had been permanent secretary of the ministry of defense since 2015.

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ETHIOPIA: This is KASSA TEKLEBERHAN’S first ambassadorial appointment. He is a politician whose previous posts include speaker of the House of Federation, the upper house of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia’s parliament, and, since 2015, minister of federal affairs and Pastoral Areas Development. Early in 2017, he was one of several senior government officials who were unexpectedly appointed ambassadors. In part because the announcement did not at first mention the foreign capitals to which they were assigned, some saw it as the removal of longestablished political figures to bring fresh blood into the government. GAMBIA: DAWDA FADERA headed the Republic of The Gambia’s civil service until he was—in the words of the official announcement—“redeployed to the foreign service” and appointed ambassador to Washington. Like some other newly appointed African envoys, Fadera walked into an immigration problem. In 2016, the U.S. State Department had begun denying visas to Gambian government officials wishing to travel to America in retaliation to President Yahya Jammeh’s refusal to accept the deportation of 2,000 Gambian illegal immigrants. Jammeh’s 22year autocratic rule was finally ended when Adama Barrow won the presidential election that same year. By the end of 2017, Gambia reached an agreement with the U. S. on the deportees, but then came the challenge of shipping them home—an ongoing operation that is taking several months. GUINEA: Ambassador KERFALLA YANSANÉ is another new ambassador facing a similar visa ban because at the time of writing Guinea is on the U.S. list of so-called “recalcitrant states” for refusing to accept thousands Guinean immigrants Homeland Security wants to deport. Kefalla, a graduate of the Paris Institute of

Political Studies (“Sciences Po”) is a former government minister of mines and geology, and more recently was minister to the president.

JAPAN: SHINSUKE SUGIYAMA has been an opera lover since he went to a performance of “Lucia di Lammermoor” in Tokyo some years ago, and was hooked. He’s not in Washington for the opera, however. As Japan’s ambassador his main challenge is to manage the lines of communication between President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, one of the American president’s favorite foreign interlocutors. Since Trump’s election, the two leaders have met seven times, and speak regularly on the phone. Sugiyama was the top bureaucrat (vice foreign minister) in the Japanese foreign ministry before coming to Washington for second tour of duty at the Washington, D.C. embassy. As a student at Oxford he had become an Episcopalian. His daughter, Reina, has been a fashion designer in New York for nearly two decades. KIRIBATI: Where is Kiribati anyway? It’s a former British colony in Micronesia in the Central Pacific, consisting of 32 coral islands and atolls, mostly narrow strips strung across miles of ocean. More than 90 percent of the less than 100,000 population lives on Tarawa Atoll, in what used to be known as the Gilbert Islands. Kiribati has no embassy here; TEBURORO TITO a three-time former president of Kiribati, holds the twin posts of representative to the United Nations and ambassador to Washington.

University. In Korea, where he spent the subsequent years in and out of public service, he most recently headed the policy think tank of President Moon Jae-in’s successful 2017 election campaign, and is thus considered a safe pair of hands by the Moon administration to handle U.S.Korean bi-lateral relations at a difficult and uncertain time. In the run-up to President Trump’s Singapore meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un, the ambassador wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post urging optimism. His title was “With North Korea, this time is different.” But is it?

LEBANON: As Lebanon’s ambassador, the Beirut government chose GABRIEL ISSA, a Lebanese-American businessman lately of Detroit, and a close adviser to President Michel Aoun. Issa emigrated to the U.S. when he was 18, but returned to Lebanon in 2016 to work in Aoun’s successful campaign for president. In 1978, while still enrolled at the Detroit Institute of Technology, Issa launched a technical translation service that was soon doing work for the automobile industry. He was also active in the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) started by Aoun in exile and now the dominant Maronite Christian party in the Lebanese parliament.

LESOTHO: SANKATANA GABRIEL MAJA comes to diplomacy after a long career in accounting and administration in international organizations in the Kingdom of Lesotho, in Southern Africa. Trained as an accountant, KOREA: CHOO YOON-JE he has worked for CARE (Cooperative for is an economist with years American Relief Everywhere), the of Washington experience Millennium Challenge Corporation and at (1989-1993) at the World USAID’s Lesotho field office. King Letsie III Bank and the International named him ambassador in 2018, and he Monetary Fund plus a presented his credentials to President Trump professorship at Georgetown in June.

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THE INS AND OUTS OF BEING A FOREIGN STUDENT IN TRUMP’S USA INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS NAVIGATE STRICT IMMIGRATION POLICIES.

n 2015, following the signing of the Iran nuclear agreement, the number of Iranian students studying in the United States rose to 11,338 from 4,731 five years earlier. Then, in 2016, with lessening tension between Iran and the United States as a result of the accord, the number went up further to 12,643. But that was before the Trump administration’s exclusionist immigration policies. As one of the Muslim countries originally targeted with an outright visa ban in 2017, Iran was among the hardest hit. That ban was rejected by the courts and, in theory, visas are still available to Iranian students, but all applicants were “subject to enhanced scrutiny,” as stated in current instructions to U.S. consuls. The result, according to an analysis by the Atlantic Council, has been that Iranian student numbers “have diminished considerably since Trump was inaugurated.” The situation with Iranian students shows how Trump’s visa restrictions are closing the gates of American college campuses to foreigners. In the fall of 2017, after years of steady growth, the number of foreign students enrolled in American universities declined overall by 7 percent (from a record 1.3 million the previous year). In part, that’s because many would be applicants from non-targeted countries— particularly in the Middle East—were and remain alienated from doing so by what they see as an increasingly hostile attitude towards foreign students, and by the prospect of ever tighter restrictions. “The fact that we have a travel ban at all sends a signal to international students that they may not be welcome in the United States,” says Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell University professor of immigration. Not all American universities have been hit by the shortfall. At American University, for example, international student enrollment in 2018 is little changed from previous years at around 11 percent of the total intake. But when the District-based Institute of International Education surveyed 500

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universities, 45 percent reported a marked drop in the number of students from overseas. Temple University launched a social media and video campaign called #YouAreWelcomeHere to “push back against the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from our policy leaders,” says Esther Brimmer, executive director and CEO of The Association of International Educators (NAFSA). As campus concern has spread, so has support for the campaign. To date, more than 350 colleges and universities, 60 international companies and organizations and 20 high schools have joined. The influx of foreign students doesn’t just bolster the prestige of U.S. academic institutions. Another advantage is financial. According to the Institute of International Education, foreign student tuition contributed $39 billion to the American economy in 2016, and created, or supported more than 450,000 jobs. “Campuses across the country have been forced to make rounds of cuts brought on, in large part, by a loss of international students,” The New York Times reported earlier this year. “Schools in the Midwest have been particularly hard hit—many of them non-flagship public universities that have come to rely heavily on tuition from foreign students, who generally pay more than in-state students.” But in August, things got even tougher

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for those who had succeeded in overcoming the visa hurdle, and were studying in the U.S. ICE, the immigration and customs arm of the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was cracking down on student visa overstays. F visa holders (foreign students) and researchers must now leave the country the day after graduation to avoid being penalized for “unlawful presence.” An overstay of six months could result in a three-year ban on re-entering the United States. This, foreign students say, makes it virtually impossible to transfer from one university to another, or to find a potential employer who would sponsor a work visa. Chinese students are being targeted with even tougher restrictions—to the consternation of American academic and research institutions. Gone are the five-year visas of the past. The State Department now allows Chinese graduate students studying in such sensitive fields as technology and science (a very large number of all Chinese students) to remain in the U.S. for one year at a time, with a chance to reapply every year—after additional scrutiny. The move was part of the administration’s effort to “defeat espionage and [intellectual property] theft,” according to a government document with the title “National Security Strategy” that also urges universities to “protect data and underlying infrastructure.” It’s not as though foreign students could hitherto wander about the United States unchecked. Big Brother, in the shape of Homeland Security, has been watching them since 2003. The recent constraints are actually additions to a surveillance system that, since 2003, has collected information about all foreign students and exchange visitors during their U.S. stay. The program, called Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), requires all schools and universities to feed, and keep updated, information about their international students and their dependents into a database to which the government has access.

SPECIAL FEATURE

AMBASSADORS

LIBERIA: LOIS C BRUTUS is a career diplomat with more than 20 years’ service. She rose from trainee to senior legal counsel at the ministry of foreign affairs in Monrovia, the Liberian capital and in 2006 was appointed ambassador to South Africa. A women’s rights activist, Brutus founded the Association of Female Lawyers in Liberia and led the campaign for strengthening Liberia’s rape laws in which, for example, the penalty for gang rape was made life imprisonment. In her message on the embassy website, Brutus says that after decades of internal conflict starting in the 1970s Liberia has emerged “as a post-conflict success.” She told the Monrovia media that, as ambassador in Washington, she would foster security, trade and immigration. By March, she was pushing back against a Trump decision to phase out a program called Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) that had allowed some 3,600 Liberian refugees from the conflict to stay in the U.S. for over two decades.They have been given 12 months to leave.

NOT SUCH MOVABLE FEASTS THE LONGEST SERVING DIPLOMATS

President Clinton and Hillary Clinton with the Kyotas in 1997.

n ambassador’s career is lived in segments of between three and four years. That’s the usual length of his or her tour of duty in any one capital. But there is no fixed duration, and it could be longer—much longer in the case of some envoys in Washington. Here are the three longest serving foreign ambassadors. HERSEY K Y O TA , ambassador of Palau, a group of islands in the North Pacific Ocean, south of the Philippines. Kyota presented his credentials to President Bill Clinton in 1997. As the longest serving ambassador in Washington, he is dean of the diplomatic corps, which involves some duties representing the interests of the diplomatic community— and ensures him a good seat at such functions as the State of the Union address and major funerals.

MERET ORAZOV of

Turkmenistan, a former Soviet state in Central Asia. Orazov is a scientist who held a number of senior posts in government before being assigned to Washington as chief of mission. He presented his credentials in February 2001, and as second longestserving ambassador is deputy dean of the diplomatic corps. MOMBOULI , ambassador of the Republic of the Congo also took up his present assignment in 2001, but Orazov beat him by five months: Mombouli’s tenure on the State Department’s precedence list dates from July. Never mind that prior to becoming ambassador Mombouli was chargé d’affaires at the Washington embassy from 1997. SERGE

LIBYA: On December 1, 2017, just days before Libyan Prime Minister Fayiz al-Serraj met with President Trump— the first such visit to the White House by a leader of that country in more than 50 years—WAFA BUGHAIGHIS+ a Washington, D.C.-trained oil company engineer, women’s right activist and charge d’affaires of the Libyan Embassy since 2014, presented her credentials to the president and became Libya’s ambassador. After three years as chargé, which is a diplomatic way of saying she did the work of an ambassador without the title or the salary, the Libyan government decided it was time to make an honest woman of her.While in Washington, Prime Minister Serraj also formally opened Libya’s new embassy in the Shepherd Park neighborhood. However, there is no corresponding U.S. Embassy in Libya.The situation on the ground, in turmoil since the 2011 revolution that followed the removal of Muammar Gaddafi, is still considered too dangerous to re-open it.

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DIPLOMACY BY TWEET AMBASSADORS TAKE TO TWITTER LIKE DUCKS TO WATER

f René Descartes, the French philosopher, were alive today he would probably alter his famous philosophical statement (okay, philosophical cliché) to, “I tweet, therefore I am.” That assertion can be applied to many ambassadors in Washington who use Twitter with increasing frequency as a useful medium to personalize diplomacy. Tweeting can be a convenient form of rapid response, without having to pass through the filter of conventional media. When critics suggested that Africa had won the soccer World Cup because of the number of African origin players in the French équipe, Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador, promptly snapped back that, “every citizen is part of the French identity and together they belong to the nation of France.” In a capital where the president regards tweets as holy writ, tweeting can capture the attention of the highest reaches of the U.S. administration. When Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador, tweeted in April that he was “delighted” that President Trump was visiting the U.K., he triggered a barrage of protest tweets (Sample: “Delighted? What an insensitive, totally inappropriate and ignorant expression of support! #Trump:loathedinEurope”). That’s what it looked like to protesting Brits, but was it? The ambassador could hardly have

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President Donald Trump is credited with revolutionizing Twitter diplomacy. expected a favorable reaction, so it’s safe to speculate that he was sending the White House a message that Trump could expect a hostile reception in Britain. On the other hand, there’s nothing subtle about the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Antonov’s use of his Twitter account to hammer the administration that anti-Russia sanctions are harming American exporters as well as the Russians. (The Russian Embassy website, incidentally, has a tweet asking for funds to cover the legal fees of Maria Butina, the Russian national being held on charges of infiltrating U.S. political groups on behalf of the Kremlin). But ambassadors also find Twitter a useful tool in other ways. Since her recent arrival, German Ambassador Emily Haber has used the application to sketch out a personal profile.

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She recently tweeted a video of her visit to the German School she attended in her childhood, when her diplomat father was at the embassy she now heads. In an earlier tweeted video Haber went down memory lane to Dumbarton Oaks, the museum and conference center in Georgetown, in the course of which she revealed her own interest in music by observing: “Music lovers will know the name because of the E Flat concerto by (Igor) Stravinsky”—probably not something that springs to the mind of every Washingtonian. Another recent tweet shows her stacking books as she settles into the residence. The Indian ambassador, Navtej Sarna, a noted author, recently used Twitter to blow his own trumpet a little. He was photographed with makers of a Bollywood movie based partially on one of his novels. In another tweet, he provided a link to his Financial Times review of two new books on the British Raj. Just as there’s fake news, that are also fake Twitter handles. In August, tweets began to appear signed by the Chinese ambassador, Cui Tiankai. This raised questions because Twitter is banned in China, yet Tiankai quickly began collecting followers. Within days, the Chinese Embassy in Washington issued a press release declaring the ambassador’s supposed Twitter account “a fake,” and threatening legal action “against the counterfeiters.”

SPECIAL FEATURE

AMBASSADORS

MALI: Ambassador MAHAMADOU NIMAGA presented his credentials in June 2018. He represents a country that has been one of Africa’s hottest spots since 2012. The northern area especially has been a battleground for ethnic factions, al-Qaida and other jihadist groups, and transnational criminal networks fighting for hegemony and control of trafficking routes. A U.N. peacekeeping force, and French troops are deployed on the ground, and the U.S. has a supporting drone base in neighboring Niger. In 2015, a peace agreement was cobbled together and Nimaga told a Washington interest group shortly after his arrival that the situation was improving—an assurance not shared by other sources. Before coming to Washington, Nimaga, an alumnus of the famous École National d’Administration (ENA) in Paris where French presidents are trained, held the post of foreign policy adviser to the president of Mali. Before that he was Mali’s representative to the African Union.

MALTA : KEITH AZZOPARDI represents the Mediterranean island of Malta, the smallest member state in the European Union. He was previously Maltese ambassador to Austria, and before that a political advisor to the European Parliament in Brussels, mainly in the committee of foreign affairs and the subcommittee on security and defense. MONGOLIA: YONDON OTGONBAYAR received his diplomatic training at the Moscow Institute of International Relations and held posts in the Mongolian Ministry of External Relations and his country’s embassy in New Delhi. He was foreign policy adviser to the prime minister from 2001–2004 when he became secretary

general of the ruling Mongolian Revolutionary People’s Party. In 2008, Otgonbayar was appointed minister of education and culture, and concurrently a member of the Mongolian parliament. He was appointed to Washington in March 2018.

NIGERIA: SYLVANUS ADIEWERE NSOFOR, a retired justice of the Nigerian Court of Appeal is a historic figure in his frequently troubled country. In March 2017 Nsofor was named ambassador to the United States. Then 82, Justice Nsofor’s nomination was at first rejected by the Nigerian senate. Nsofor’s “responses to the issues raised were devoid of details and mostly satirical,” complained the relevant Senate committee. Senators had asked him to sing the Nigerian national anthem, apparently to assess his mental state (he was a graduate of the London School of Economics), but he refused. Months later, Nigerian President Buhari sent the nomination back to the Senate, and this time the judge won approval. “As opposed to being sarcastic and frail when he first appeared before us, he’s looking better,” was the senators’ verdict. PAKISTAN: Banker and hi-tech entrepreneur ALI JEHANGIR SIDDIQUI was named Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States by the outgoing government in Islamabad four days before the end of its term—amid protests by Imran Khan’s Tahreek-e-Insaf party, then in opposition. Khan’s party had called the banker a “novice” in diplomacy and foreign affairs and demanded his replacement with “an experienced diplomat.” Siddiqui, a Cornell University alumnus, presented his credentials earlier this year; but with Imran Khan now heading the government his future as ambassador, Pakistan’s Tribune newspaper

said, is “uncertain.” PHILIPPINES: Media executive and well-known columnist JOSÉ MANUEL “BEBE” ROMUALDEZ, the Philippine’s new envoy, is short on diplomatic experience, but long— actually, very long—on connections. His aunt is the Philippines’ legendary former first lady Imelda Marcos, she of the vast shoe collection. In addition, being ambassador to the U.S. is a kind of family business. Bebe is the third Romualdez to hold the job, and the one with the toughest job of the three, as unpredictable, foul-mouthed Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte seeks closer ties with China while at the same time distancing his country from its old ally, the United States.

SENEGAL: Representing this West African former French colony—and still officially a French-speaking nation—is MOMAR DIOP, a senior career diplomat and academic. He came to Washington directly from the Netherlands, where he was Senegal’s ambassador and concurrently vice-president of the Assembly of States Parties, the management oversight and legislative body of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. SLOVAKIA: Both the Slovakian and the Slovenian embassies in Washington have dismissed as fake news a BBC tweet that staffers from the two missions meet periodically to exchange incorrectly addressed and wrongly delivered mail. On the other hand, Slovakia’s new ambassador, IVAN KORCOK, can expect occasionally to be confused with his Slovenian counterpart, because that has happened in the past. To be clear, Slovenia is first lady Melania Trump’s Balkan birth place. Slovakia is the Central European breakaway state from the Czech Republic.

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THREE SITUATIONS DESERVING MORE ATTENTION AN ANALYST’S EXPERT APPRAISAL OF WHAT THE U.S. WON’T DO IN YEMEN, LIBYA AND THE FIGHT AGAINST ISIS.

hock and embarrassment at America’s involvement has resulted in a rare bipartisan effort by the U.S. Congress to halt the Trump administration’s military support for the Saudi Arabian and Emirate air offensive that daily lacerates Yemen’s civilian population. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has estimated that a child dies every 10 minutes in large measure because of Saudi coalition’s aerial bombing and blockade - and no one is calling that an exaggeration. Yet, despite the mounting humanitarian crisis in Yemen the United States is unlikely to either withdraw its backing, which would greatly undermine the Saudi-Emirate effort to reinstate the deposed Yemeni government, or push for a cessation of hostilities, according to a leading analyst of the conflict. Tom Sanderson is co-founder and former director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Here he discusses what the U.S. is doing and not doing in three controversial areas: Yemen, Libya, and ISIS. Sanderson helps governments and the private sector to identify, understand, and navigate risk and opportunity.

WASHINGTON LIFE: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently testified that the Saudi coalition was doing enough to avoid civilian casualties, but reports from Yemen suggest otherwise. So what would be the most effective U.S. posture in the catastrophic Yemen civil war? Step up support for the Saudis, pressure on them to stop, or remain aloof? SANDERSON Following August airstrikes by Saudi-U.A.E. forces, the U.S. Secretary of Defense warned that support was in jeopardy unless the coalition could exercise greater care in its operations. Republicans and Democrats alike have called for an end to U. S. assistance, which includes American tankers

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and bombs to refuel and arm [the Saudi-U.A.E] coalition attack aircraft. In September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress the Saudiled coalition was following through with U.S. demands. He said they were “undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.” This didn’t convince everyone, and the debate over the U.S. role remains heated. I anticipate no appreciable pressure beyond what the U.S. has already applied, although a sharp increase in civilian deaths could threaten the status quo.

WL Otherwise, no further pressure? SANDERSON America’s relationship with the coalition leaders goes well beyond the civil war in Yemen. Both Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. are influential players in energy, diplomacy, and intelligence sharing. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. have strong diplomatic and lobbying teams in Washington to ensure a smooth relationship with the United States. Very high levels of direct investment and arms deals worth tens of billions of dollars have gained both nations supporters across America. Finally, President Trump firmly backs coalition efforts in Yemen, where both ISIS and al-Qaeda are targeted in addition to Houthis. WL Fighting has escalated in Libya and from a distance the situation remains as insoluble as ever, with Russia and Egypt creeping back into the picture. The factional fighting is reminiscent of Lebanon in the 1980s. Where does the U.S. stand in resolving the post-Gaddafi chaos in this oil-rich country, and what should it be doing? SANDERSON Neither an activist policy nor much progress can be found in Libya today—a country beset by worsening violence, multiple internal power centers, and outside forces seeking advantage. Severe unrest forced the U.S. Embassy to relocate from Tripoli to

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Tunisia in 2014 where it remains. But the distance from Tripoli weakens America’s influence in the country and its support to the U.N.backed government of Fayez Serraj. Currently, the U.S. is pursuing a two-pronged strategy involving counter-ISIS operations and limited efforts at reconciliation. On the ground, a spectrum of actors pursues interests at cross purposes and often blunt any progress. After being ejected from its coastal redoubts, ISIS has reappeared. Russia—with special forces and drones operating from Egypt— supports General Haftar’s Libyan National Army, which is also buttressed by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Human traffickers carve their way across Libya, ferrying desperate people into Europe. Libya may yet surpass the degree and duration of violence and instability in Lebanon, which, we should recognize, remains a nation with uncertain prospects in a violent and transformative Middle East.

WL How realistic is Trump’s boast that ISIS has been defeated? In Syria, almost, but hasn’t it moved into other areas – Libya, Chad, maybe Russia? As for Al-Qaida, don’t we seem to be in the bizarre situation of protecting them in Syria? SANDERSON They have suffered immensely, losing their caliphate and thousands of fighters. But a sobering reality remains. Both the “push” and “pull” factors that swelled the ranks of ISIS and al Qaeda not only remain, but have worsened. Radicalization, marginalization, injustice, rejection, corruption, sectarianism— coupled with a deep thirst for income, revenge, a sense of purpose, belonging and redemption will drive many into the arms of tomorrow’s terrorist groups. Inspiring them are experienced foreign fighters who remain armed and seething. With acolytes stretching from the Philippines to Mali and from France to Afghanistan, this is no time to declare victory.

SPECIAL FEATURE

AMBASSADORS

BALL DIPLOMACY & BEYOND MERIDIAN CEO STUART HOLLIDAY ON HIS WORK WITH INTERNATIONAL LEADERS

WL: How have the programs n the evening of October evolved over the years? 12, Stuart Holliday will HOLLIDAY: In the 1960s and put on his black tie and, with 1970s they used to be mainly his elegant wife Gwen, host the political. Then we added Meridian Ball. As many as 800 of journalists, and now civil Washington’s movers and shakers, society and entrepreneurs. will sip champagne in the rooms It’s a testament to the fact of the Georgian-style mansion, Luciana Gonzalez-Revilla and Panama Amb. Emanuel Gonzalez-Revilla, Adrienne Arsht, Amb. Stuart Holliday, Gwen Holliday, Sec. Carlos Gutierrez, Edilia that most countries now have stroll among the linden trees in its Gutierrez, Tony Podesta at the 2016 Meridian Ball. Photo by Tony Powell. influential people that are spacious garden and dance in the specially erected marquee. Now who expressed an interest in seeing American not just in government. The other thing that’s in its 50th year, the Meridian Ball is one of the policing up close, and spent two weeks with changed is: originally it was, come to America and see how it’s done. Now it’s come and to see oldest and most popular fund-raising events on the police in Oakland, Calif., in 1986. the city’s social calendar; and yet it’s a safe bet Holliday, a former U.S. ambassador at the what can we learn from each other about how that some of the guests will have no more than United Nations for Special Political Affairs, has it should be done. Working with the diplomatic a vague idea of what the Meridian International so far been president and CEO of Meridian for corps in Washington has been a very important Center actually does. a dozen years, and is only the fourth to hold the part of what we have done here since the But it’s a good cause. Meridian’s main job in its 52-year existence (the Meridian Ball beginning. Meridian welcomes ambassadors mission is both diplomatic and educational. Its was started later). His immediate predecessor, and helps them get established. We’ve now program is to help visiting foreigners discover now a president emeritus, was Walter Cutler, a decided to launch an advisory boardto create an America that’s nothing like the stereotype former ambassador to Saudi Arabia. In a recent a center for diplomatic engagement, which is notions with which they frequently arrive. conversation Holliday began by stressing just a way of formalizing what we’ve been doing for many years. Every year, it does this by acting as host, travel Meridian’s non-partisan posture. agent, program director and occasional nanny to between 3,000 and 4,000 politicians, STUART HOLLIDAY: Meridian has remained a WL: How do you judge success or failure? entrepreneurs, scientists, students and others neutral, non-partisan institution through the years. HOLLIDAY: We want to be a catalyst. What from all over the world, primarily on behalf Meridian has no point of view per se, other than a you want to look at is what would people do of the U.S. State Department, which invites belief in the U.S. international role. We’ve worked with what they’ve learned? How do they apply most of the visitors and provides most of the with every administration to really continue its their leadership lessons? Is there an economic legacy as an institution created to strengthen relationship that comes out of this that benefits funding. the United States and the other party? Is there a If ever America’s image overseas needed leadership collaboration and exchanges. leader that we will need to deal with in the future help it surely does now. But what Meridian calls its tailor made leadership programs follow WASHINGTON LIFE: Do you get visits from who has a better understanding of American a well-established pattern. The annual visit this foreign leaders who recall their earlier time at society and the American people? People tend to view the United States as monolithic, but it’s summer by British parliamentarians (three Meridian? Conservative, three Labour) was typical. The HOLLIDAY: Of course. One person who not. For example, foreigners are surprised at the MPs spent a week in Washington and then came back, and credits his career in part to his degree to which states are entities that have their two further weeks outside the Beltway touring experience in a Meridian program is Anders own standing. congressional districts—as both Margaret (Fogh) Rasumssen, a former NATO secretary Thatcher and Theresa May had done on the general. He was a young man who came here WL: What are some of your foreign visitors’ same program, years before. Meridian keeps a as part of an international business leadership preconceptions about the United States? list of foreign leaders who once participated in program. There’s over a hundred heads of state HOLLIDAY:The one view that most international its several leadership programs. One alumnus and government who were visitors and who have visitors seem to share is that there is no distinction between the American government was former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, gone on to leadership positions.

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and its people. They view American society as individualistic and Wild West-style. They have the idea that this is a country with a propensity to a certain level of violence. They have the idea that we all carry our own weapon. And the death penalty, of course. Foreigners don’t understand that’s a state decision, not a Federal decision. WL: In general, what’s the takeaway for a Meridian International visitor at the end of his or her program? HOLLIDAY: They’re amazed at the social and economic mobility that’s possible in the United States. They’re amazed that someone comes here, and can basically invent a life, whereas in other parts of the world the social class and work structure are pretty firmly fixed. Number two, there’s an admiration and a fascination with the swings of American public opinion and the speed of change. How does the country that elected George W. Bush, elect Barack Obama, elect Donald Trump? Third, is the friendliness of the average American person; as they travel there might be a perception that America is suspicious, but at the personal level the affability and openness of the average American person in talking, engaging and opening their homes to somebody from another country, especially as they travel outside the Beltway. And fourth is our higher education: still viewed as best in class. WL: Don’t foreign visitors sometimes complain they’re being spoon fed information? HOLLIDAY: A lot has to do with the diversity of people they meet and things they get to do. You need to spend time outside of the Beltway to get a real picture of America. WL: Does your funding come from the government? HOLLIDAY: The largest contribution is from the government, and we have a very active corporate council, and philanthropic support. We have worked with some of the embassies here in Washington, mainly in the art and cultural arena. But there’s no foreign influence. We’re not writing papers for anybody.

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of the Slovak ministry of foreign affairs before coming to Washington. He also served as ambassador to the European Union, and to Germany before that.

SOUTH SUDAN: After decades of civil war, South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011, to become the world’s newest nation. But after massive celebrations conflict broke out again among rival leaders seeking control. Ambassador PHILIP NATANA takes over at an embassy that reflects his country’s unrest. For example, the non-diplomatic embassy staff went on strike recently, complaining that they had not been paid for nine months. SPAIN: SANTIAGO CABANAS ANSORENA, Spain’s new ambassador, is no stranger to the United States. He was assigned to the embassy early in his career, and from 2005 was for five years Spanish consul general in Miami. He has also held key posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid, and been ambassador to the Czech Republic (2000-2005), Jordan (2010-2012) and most recently Algeria (2017).

THAILAND: VIRACHAI PLASAI presented his credentials to President Trump in June 2018. Before that, he had been the Kingdom of Thailand’s permanent representative to the United Nations since 2015. Earlier in his career, Plasai was successful in challenging the U.S. in the so-called “Shrimp-Turtle” case before the World Trade Organization. The U.S. wanted to make it mandatory that Thai and Malaysian fishing fleets used special shrimp nets that allowed sea turtles, an endangered species, to escape; but the WTO ruled in favor of the Asians.

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UZBEKISTAN: JAVLON VAKHABOV represents an energy rich, former Soviet Central Asian republic on Afghanistan’s northern border, and therefore vital to the strategic interests of the United States. He comes to Washington as his country makes a slow transition from the repressive regime of the notorious President Islam Karimov, who died in 2016, to that of President Shenkat Mirziyoyev, who has promised greater political and economic openness. Prior to coming to Washington, Vakhabov was first deputy minister of foreign affairs. . VIETNAM: HA KIM NGOC, Hanoi’s new ambassador to Washington has spent most of his diplomatic career in the area of Vietnam’s relations with the United States and the Americas, starting with a nine-year assignment as desk officer (19881997) in the foreign affairs ministry’s America department. His previous U.S. posting was in the Vietnamese consulate in San Francisco (19972000). Prior to his current appointment, Ha Kim Ngoc was deputy minister of foreign affairs with the Americas and the United Nations as his main area of responsibility. ZAMBIA: NGOSA SIMBYAKULA will collect a lot of air miles if he travels to all the countries included concurrently in his Washington posting. The first-time ambassador is also accredited on a non-resident basis to Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua. In his native Zambia, one of the most stable countries in Africa, he was both an academic and a politician: he taught law at the University of Zambia, and was a member of parliament, and from 2016-2017 minister of justice in President Edgar Lungu’s administration. As minister, he was responsible for the recent revision of Zambia’s constitution.

SPECIAL FEATURE

BOOK TALK

ENABLING INEQUALITY Anand Giridharadas’ “Winners Take All” investigates the global elite trying to change the world, while keeping themselves rich. BY ERICA MOODY

t’s no secret that the United States is plagued by extreme wealth inequality.Ten years after the financial crisis, the only people who have recovered are the top one percent, while 99 percent of Americans are 30 percent poorer than they were in 2007. The average pre-tax income of the top tenth has doubled since 1980 while the earnings of the bottom half of Americans has remained virtually the same. Some readers will be in that top ten percent and are aware of such statistics. They are also likely to be philanthropic and may be speaking up for social causes. But are those at the top willing to disrupt the status quo to make the world a more equitable place? Or are the wealthy just making things worse to make themselves feel—or look—better? Journalist Anand Giridharadas asks these questions in his new book “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” which goes inside the world of the “billionaire saviors,” from tech-world thought leader conferences to black-tie fundraisers and the halls of Georgetown University, where elite students are recruited by finance companies selling a message of altruism. I spoke to the author and MSNBC political analyst to discuss his views.

YOU SAY THE BOOK IS THE INTERSECTION OF AN OBSERVATION OF SOCIETY AND A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. WHAT WAS THE OBSERVATION? I was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times in 2009 and moved back to New York in 2009. We were very much in the depths of the economic crisis but also in the depths of a longer generation-long crisis that had made the American Dream feel so elusive to so many people. It was very clear that something fundamental in this country had been lost: people’s sense of being able to make a better life for themselves. And at the same time, we live in this age of heroic generosity, all these people giving money away and all these young people wanting to change the world and everybody

was not a business leader, but in every class of 20 or so people they throw in a couple who are not—for spice and entertainment. As I got into that world and went to the Aspen Ideas Festival and saw it was sponsored by Pepsi and Monsanto in the Koch brothers seminar building discussing how to make the world a better place, it seemed like something more complicated was going on when the rich and powerful get together to make a difference. I got curious about what really happens when rich people don’t just try to make a difference but almost take over the work of social change. The Aspen Institute asked me to give a speech and I gave a surprise one critiquing many of us in the room, myself included, who come to these places and talk about making a difference but in many ways are part of keeping things fundamentally the same.

gravitating to buying a tote bag or TOMS shoes that make a difference. I couldn’t square those things in my mind—how is it that we live in this age where everybody seems worried about making a difference and yet it’s the most unequal time in 100 years, the angriest time in a long time? All the economic data suggests it’s basically impossible for many people to actually work hard, play by the rules and get ahead. I became interested in the way in which generosity might not just be a drop in the bucket against that injustice but would actually be part of how we uphold an unjust social order. AND THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE THAT LED TO THE BOOK WAS AN ASPEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL LEADERS FELLOWSHIP IN 2011. WHY WAS THAT EXPERIENCE A CATALYST? I jokingly call it a benevolent secret society. These fellowships have become very common, and this one was about grooming young business leaders to be change agents. I

HOW DID YOU APPROACH TURNING THAT CONTROVERSIAL SPEECH INTO A BOOK OVER THREE YEARS? The speech was an argument and, for the kind of books I do, an argument should be a very small component of it. People have their own ideas,. They don’t need to be lectured by other people’s ideas. I don’t think that moves the needle on what people think. What I’ve found is there’s no substitute for reporting, for getting into rooms that other people can’t because you have that access, and actually bothering to figure out what other people think. I had to take the argument of that speech and go back to the beginning, not to start with the answers but to start with the questions. How do you square Mark Zuckerburg talking about giving all his fortune away, building community, empowering people, with the fact that it’s the most predatory monopoly on earth? How do you square all of the paraphernalia of elite kindness with the reality of elite predation? Those questions began my inquiry but I decided to answer them not by sitting in a room and thinking but by spend-

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ing time with people in these worlds. There’s an old tendency when people write about inequality to write about the poor. We think those stories are more exotic, but it occurred to me—why do we write about inequality from the vantage point of the people merely living in it instead of the people who architected it? Let’s hear from the people who built the system. In writing about the poor it almost makes it seem like they made this but they didn’t. They were the least responsible for creating the world they live in, so I thought it would be a quietly radical act to write about how rich people think about the world they built. I thought, enough poverty porn, let’s do some philanthrocapitalist porn.

require sacrifice by winners for the common good There’s a light facsimile of change that is free or cheap and the winners gravitate to those as a way, consciously or unconsciously, of staving off the more expensive kind of change.

WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT HOW THE ELITE (THE “WINNERS?”) VIEW THE WORLD? Most of the people I write about are hyper aware of being in an age of inequality, and almost all of them want to respond to this. They give back at historic levels, run programs, volunteer, and you could make a strong case that they do more than most previous elites in history, but what is also true about them is that they tend to give and help in ways that absolutely protect themselves.They give self-preservationally.They give in ways that protect their opportunity to keep taking.

‘I got curious about what really happens when rich people don’t just try to make a difference but almost take over the work of social change.’

SHARE SOME EXAMPLES OF ELITE SELF-PRESERVATIONAL GIVING? They give to charter schools but they don’t support a movement to fight for equal public schools for all. Why is it that Chevy Chase has public schools funded at like $20-$30,000 a year per student and how much are the schools in Southeast funded at? Generally rich people will support a charter school and get on the board and help some kids go to college but they will not fight for the thing that would equalize it for everybody. Why? Because at the end of the day they don’t want to see Chevy Chase public schools brought down to the level of the average.That’s painful, that would require sacrifice, that’s not a winwin. Also, the issue of empowering women.We know from about 15 countries in the world that do this better than us, it’s not that complicated what actually empowers women: things like maternity leave and certain healthcare policies, but those things would be ... expensive or

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YOU’VE SAID THAT ALL OF THIS WAS ONE OF THE FACTORS THAT LED TO THE ELECTION OF TRUMP. A lot of rich people on the right and left who try to change the world and make a difference through their giving enabled him in two ways. They promoted fake change over the last several years at a time when we needed real change, needed to figure out what to do with all the people displaced by trade and automation and the communities where mobil-

ity had ground to a halt. We needed to figure out education. Climate change is an education problem. All these issues are linked. In this period of declining mobility and the American Dream falling out of people’s reach, rich people generally responded by richsplaining to them that all was well, that you were wrong about your own reality, things were getting better and you just had to sit down and shut up and lean in. Selling fake change when real change is necessary just widens the gap, just makes the problems bigger and deeper and makes them fester, and I think it’s hard to understand the rise of Trump without understanding all those problems that were festering for 20-30 years instead of being addressed. HOW DID TRUMP APPEAL TO HIS VOTERS? Trump basically embodies this notion that he can fight for the forgotten man and woman of this country but he can also enrich himself from his hotels and golf courses and there’s no tension. His enrichment and the enrichment of the forgotten are the same. That win-win is at the heart of this book and he didn’t start that idea. ... Trump rode the coattails of a lot of billionaire saviors who were pushing this

| O C T O B E R | washingtonlife.com

phony change for a long time. THIS MAGAZINE IS READ BY THE WASHINGTON ELITE. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SAY TO THEM DIRECTLY? One thing to think about is that I think seven out of the 10 richest counties in America encircle Washington. That’s a very, very bad indicator. The city designed to create real change is not supposed to be a place where cash is the prize. The seat of democracy has basically been captured by people who have figured out how to make money by being approximate to the system. ... The purpose of the city is to represent the rest of the country, and it clearly is failing to do that in a way that is so spectacular that a nincompoop demagogue is now in charge of the most powerful country in the history of the world. WHAT SHOULD THESE WEALTHY WASHINGTONIANS BE ASKING THEMSELVES? Washington is as good a laboratory as any city in America for the ways in which we talk about change as elites, but cling to our much better schools in Alexandria and Chevy Chase while solving problems for ourselves and not for everybody at the root and make requisite noises about liberty and justice for all while in fact working as lobbyists or in various other capacities to continue the great rigging of America. One question that I would ask anyone reading this interview to consider is your regular life, not your side job, not your moonlight charity project, not what you donate to St. Jude’s, is your regular life right now on the side of making America more equitable. Are you working for the rigging or the de-rigging? It’s that simple. If a lot of your readers ask themselves that, they may not be happy with their answers. I wrote this book to not attack people but to actually allow them to hold up a mirror because the way we have always made change in America is a combination of movements from below demanding rights, demanding justice, demanding change, but also a certain number of people within the power structure being honest enough and brave enough to look at themselves and say I’m not living the values that I believe in and I want to do better. This interview has been edited and condensed.

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WASHINGTON S O C I A L D I A R Y over the moonďš? inova summitďš? hillwood gala and more!

Steve and Jean Case at the Early Mountain Vineyard wine release party. (Photo by Tony Powell)

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Andrew and Jill McCabe, MD, Scott Miller, Sharon Virts and Fred Schaufeld

J. Stephen Jones, MD, and Kathryn Jones

Greg and Pam Sullivan with Phil Odeen

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INOVA SUMMIT Salamander Resort & Spa | PHOTOS BY NANCY MILBURN KLECK HEALTHCARE DEEP DIVE: Guests of Inova Health Foundation’s annual Summit had the chance to hear from the hospital system’s new CEO J. Stephen Jones, MD, who welcomed healthcare professionals and friends to a fireside chat to kick off the event-filled weekend. The programming is billed as a “Thought Leadership Series,” where leaders in the field of medicine and other industry professionals discuss relevant issues pertaining to healthcare. Topics ranged from treating the opioid epidemic to organizing a successful healthcare system.

Kim Helfgott and Claire Messinger

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Dean Morehouse, Kathy Hirsch, and Mary Myers

Michelle Mullany and Donnan Wintermute

Tony Nader and Deborah Addo

Jeff Coster, MD, Sarah Coster and Robert Hymes, MD

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (center) with students from the Kennedy Center’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program, director Robert Ainsley (left) and Jane Cafritz (right)

Ann Brown, Finlay and Willee Lewis and D.C. Councilman Jack Evans

Xxxxxx Xxxxxx Calvin Cafritz and former Rep. Connie Morella Rep. Doris Matsui, Dorothy McSweeny and Gail West WL EXCLUSIVE

WELCOME BACK FROM SUMMER PARTY

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Calvin and Jane Cafritz Residence, Georgetown | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL ANNUAL RITUAL The Washington Social Set awaits Calvin and Jane Cafritz’s annual “Welcome Back from Summer” party as eagerly as football fans do the Redskins’ opening game — in secure knowledge that the former will have far better ambience, music and food. This year’s fete was certainly no exception, with the added blessing of perfect weather as boldfaced names from politics, business, diplomacy, arts and philanthropy gathered under a massive marquee in the Cafritzes’ garden to quaff champagne, dine on lobster and baby lamb chops and listen to operatic classics from the current crop of Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists. Those-in-the know wisely stick around to kick up their heels on the dance floor until well past the official closing time at a party many consider the best private social event of the year in the nation’s capital. VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Abigail Blunt, Sen. Roy Blunt and David Rubenstein

Kim Sajet, Donna McLarty, Grace Bender and Mac McLarty

Aubrey Sarvis and Bitsey Folger

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Jordanian Amb. Dina Kawar and Count Renaud de Viel Castel

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Peruvian Amb. Carlos Pareja,Consuelo Pareja, Lisa Barry and Jim Gale

Jeffrey Brown, Deborah Sigmund and D.C. Councilman Jack Evans wl sp o ns o r e d

Innocents at Risk The Mayflower Hotel | PHOTOS by Tony Powell

Natalie and Wright Sigmund Beverly and Michael Rohlf and Yasmine Askalani

Barbara Hawthorn

Nancy and James Rosebush 58

SAVING YOUTH: The trafficking of children is a $100 million industry in the U.S. and Innocents at Risk founder Deborah Sigmund has been working to put an end to it since 2004. The nonprofit group’s annual gala brought together politicians, activists and philanthropists in the fight to combat it. Academy Award winning director Jeffrey Brown was recognized for his film “SOLD.” Recently, Innocents and Risk has been working on programs to train flight attendants how to spot victims of human trafficking. View all the photos at www.washingtonlife.com

Linda Awkard and Carole Margaret Randolph

Barbara Harrison

Phoebe Eliopoulos and Yasmine Askalani

Wesley King and Pamela Johnson

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Ellen MacNeille Charles and Nina Rumbough

“Catherine the Great” egg cake

Ann Hand and Adam Mahr

WL SPONSORED

HILLWOOD GALA

Marilyn Wald, Mark Lowham and Sophie Hawkins

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens | PHOTOS BY TONY POWELL

Alexandra de Borchgrave

Scott Handelman, Kate Markert and Rick Handelman

CELEBRATING OPULENCE This year’s event coincided with Hillwood’s new exhibit, “Fabergé Rediscovered,” showcasing over 100 objects from the renowned firm of Russian jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé, 90 of which are from the collection of the late cereals heiress and philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post. An avid collector of Russian imperial art, Post amassed exquisite items that ranged from small bejeweled snuff boxes to the firm’s famous imperial Easter eggs. Her unerring taste helped paint a broader picture of the storied jeweler’s work. The elegant dinner, co-chaired by Sophie Hawkins, Mark Lowham and Marilyn Wald and hosted by Hillwood’s director Kate Markert, featured cocktails and dinner under a massive marquee on the estate’s Lunar Lawn. SWEET HOMAGE A giant cake replicating Fabergé’s “Catherine the Great” egg (on display in the exhibit) had guests buzzing. The egg was originally gifted to Tsarina Maria Feodorovna from her son Tsar Nicholas II in 1914.

Beverly and John Stinson and Suzanne Willett

Phoebe Fitz, Janne Rumbough, and Rowan O’Riley

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OVER THE MOON

No Tents or Fancy Trappings Top equestrians wouldn’t dream of missing the Orange County Team Chase, hunt country’s truly down home event. BY VI C KY MO O N

he splendor of Middleburg Center, it benefits the church’s and its lush surrounding outreach program. Fred and area can be viewed while driving Courtney Kohler are the through the village up and down honorary chairpersons. well-known crossroads with Finally, come enjoy smallsuch colorful rural nicknames as town living in a house not far Zulla, Atoka and Foxcroft. from the Orange County Team Still, the genuine Middleburg Chase event, but within walking can be found on more obscure distance of shops and restaurants back dirt roads.They often come in The Plains. with directions from locals like This traditional stucco sixthis: “Go across Zulla and down bedroom, six-and-a half-bath past the roll-top jump and take private residence was once a bedthe next right. Then, continue and-breakfast. Set on four-plus past Linda Tripp’s farm and acres with breathtaking mountain you’ll see the field for the views, it has a classic center hall entrance to the chase on the with a living room, a dining room, right.” a kitchen, a foyer and a finished Longtime resident and stylish equestrian Jane Bishop produces a ﬂawless a ernoon in the That would be the Orange attic along with a den/library. countryside for the annual Orange County Team Chase. County Team Chase, an Upgrades include a new kitchen/ unpretentious equestrian ritual dating to 1980. the fancy trappings. “Real Middleburgers wear bar, full window replacement, a new enclosed It’s run by stylish horsewoman and long-time rubber boots in public, not faux riding boots,” outdoor gardena painted roof and tank-less resident Jane Bishop and has been hosted by she said recently. “They don’t style their hair water system.There are front and back outdoor Karin and Mark Ohrstrom at Old Whitewood to go to the Safeway.They accept dog hair and porches with an enchanting garden. It is listed Farm near The Plains since 1982. mud because their animals mean more than by Peter Pejacsevich and Scott Buzzelli of On Sunday, Oct. 28, there will be no clean floors.” Middleburg Real Estate/ Atoka Properties for billowing white sponsors’ tents and the dress Meanwhile, visitors for the 70th edition $1.15 million. is the timeless attire of the countryside. The of the town’s iconic Christmas Shop will competition is friendly and geared toward be enchanted by artist and designer Dana children. Jumps are simple post and rail and Westring’s moving creation of a crèche he’s low stone walls, some accessorized with straw been working on for many years. and pumpkins. “It’s based on traditional Neapolitan crèches Tailgates of fried chicken and stuffed eggs are and is a view of Bethlehem with shops, workers, preferred over a lavish spread with centerpieces buildings and landscape elements,” Westring of flowers and feathers. Dick Viets, who lives said. He has a few figures from the Italian just down the road at Over The Grass Farm company Fontanini, “but the majority of the with his wife, Dielle Fleischmann, said it’s his village is populated with figures I’ve created.” “favorite gathering of horses and riders because Although his art is installed annually in the it’s devoid of almost all the mink-and-manure sanctuary at Grace Church in The Plains, it will trappings that increasingly afflict equine events be on display from Nov. 2-4 for the shopping This traditional stucco home is not far from the Orin our region.” extravaganza with 40 vendors sponsored by ange County Team Chase event, yet within walking distance of shops and charming restaurants in The Carina Elgin, whose children are the 11th Middleburg’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church. Plains. generation of Elgins in the area, agreed about Held this year at the Middleburg Community

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COURTESY PHOTO; PHOTO BY MIDDLEBURG PHOTO

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Early Mountain Vineyard’s Wine Release Party Erin Scala and Pia Pinkell

Lee Campbell

Steve and Jean Case Residence | PHOTOS by Tony Powell Virginia Wine on the Rise: Steve and Jean Case opened their Georgetown waterfront home to an intimate group of friends, supporters and wine journalists to experience Early Mountain Vineyard’s newest wine called “RISE.” Winemaker Ben Jordan praised the Bordeaux blend, calling it a representation of the couple’s focus and dedication to create quality wine. In her remarks, Jean Case recalled their transformation from wine enthusiasts to winemakers after a 2012 purchase of the Madison, Va. winery. In reference to their ultimate goal of growing the reputation of Virginia wine, she quoted an African proverb reinforcing her commitment to the region: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Steve Case joked later that while his wife manages the vineyard operations, he excels at taste testing.

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Steve and Jean Case

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Jon Decker Jack Davies, Ulla Rønberg, Julie Eller, Lars Eller and Danish Amb. Lars Gert Lose w l e x c l u s i ve

LARS ELLER STANLEY CUP CELEBRATION Embassy of Denmark | PHOTOS by TONY POWELL ROCKING THE RED, DANISH STYLE: Danish Ambassador Lars Gert Lose and wife Ulla Rønberg hosted a Washington Capitals-themed garden party at their mid-century modern residence to toast fellow countryman Lars Eller on his team’s historic Stanley Cup win, in which Eller scored the winning goal. Eller, a center for the Caps, is now the first person born in Denmark to win the coveted trophy. ON THE MENU: Hamburgers, Carlsberg pilsner (a welcome refreshment on the balmy evening) and a Stanley Cup-shaped cake. View all the photos at www.washingtonlife.com

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BOOKS ABOUND The latest in the District’s page-turners. VIEW ALL THE PHOTOS AT WWW WASHINGTONLIFE COM

Lucky Roosevelt and Steward McLaurin

Alison and Kurt Newman

‘THE STEPHEN DECATUR HOUSE: A HISTORY’ B Y J A M E S T E R T I U S D E K AY M I C H A E L FA Z I O O S B O R N E P H I N I Z Y M AC K I E A N D K AT H E R I N E M A L O N E - F R A N C E [DECATUR

HOUSE]

P H O T O S B Y B E N D R OZ

Katherine Malone-France and Knight Kiplinger

Rep. John Delaney and José Andrés

The White House Historical Association celebrated the 200th anniversary of Decatur House, the first private residence in the neighborhood of the White House, with an impressively illustrated book co-authored by James Tertius de Kay, Michael Fazio, Osborne Phinizy Mackie and Katherine Malone-France. The event featured a panel discussion, tours of the house, a book signing, a display of artwork from the Decatur and Truxtun and Marie Beale family collections and drinks and hors d’oeuvres inspired by a recipe book compiled by the wife of the architect.

Hilary West and Gail West

Hilda Brillembourg, Jeff Weiss and Cindy Jones

William H. Webster and Robert Haft

‘THE RIGHT ANSWER: HOW WE CAN UNIFY OUR DIVIDED NATION’ BY J O H N D E L A N EY

[KATHERINE AND DAVID BRADLEY RESIDENCE] P H OTO S BY TO N Y P OW E L L

The Democratic congressman from Potomac, who last year announced his bid for the 2020 presidential election, welcomed a who’s who of Washingtonians to an intimate reception celebrating his book. “The Right Answer: How We Can Unify Our Divided Nation” is part biography and part political commentary. Using his business experience as a point of reference, Delaney emphasizes the need for bipartisanship.

April Delaney, Melissa Moss, Mary Haft and Melanne Verveer

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Hillary Ross and Kellyanne Conway

Susanna Quinn and Allen Gannett

Ed and Shirley Henry xxxx

‘THE CREATIVE CURVE’

Gretchen Leach and Alexandra de Borchgrave

Llyod Hand, Ann Hand, Gretchen Leach and Leo Daly

BY A L L E N GA N N E T T

[JACK AND SUSANNA QUINN RESIDENCE] P H O T O S B Y V I R G I N I A C OY N E

‘LETTERS FROM PARIS’ B Y G R E T C H E N L E AC H

Friends gathered to fete Trackmaven founder Allen Gannett on the release of his debut book, “The Creative Curve,” an entrepreneur’s guide to developing the right idea at the right time. Hostess Susanna Quinn, founder of on-demand beauty app Veluxe (which recently sold to Glamsquad) praised Gannett and thanked him for being a mentor when she launched her business. SPOTTED: Dana Bash, Spencer Garrett, Pam Stevens, Jonathan Capehart and Nick Schmit.

[WILBUR AND HILARY ROSS RESIDENCE] P H OTO S BY TO N Y P OW E L L

Literary and political heavyweights came out to celebrate “Letters from Paris: My Life as the Wife of the U.S. Ambassador to France from 2001-2005” by Gretchen Leach. Kellyanne Conway, French Amb. Gerard Araud and Alexandra de Borchgrave were spotted toasting the debut.

‘MOON GUIDE TO WASHINGTON D.C.’ B Y S A M A N T H A S A U LT

[CAFE MILANO] P H OTO S BY TO N Y P OW E L L

Kathy Kemper, Justice Stephen Breyer and Joanna Breyer

Guests from media, politics, PR and the arts gathered at newly renovated Cafe Milano to launch “Moon Washington DC,” a guide to a “bustling powerhouse of a city” compiled by fashion writer Samantha Sault. The book explores the city’s monuments, museums, parks, restaurants and nightlife with the author providing insights and recommendations that are valuable to both visitors and residents alike. The host committee included Franco Nuschese, Chuck Conconi, Karin Tanabe, Linda Mercado Greene, Pat Harrison, Kevin Chaffee and the author’s husband, Matthew J. Lauer.

‘WHEN YOUR CHILD IS SICK’ B Y J OA N N A B R E Y E R

Samantha Sault and Matthew J. Lauer

P H OTO S BY TO N Y P OW E L L

Many parents with sick children feel they have nobody to turn to when they hear the news that their child is ill. Experienced psychosocial counselor Joanna Breyer’s new book is a guide to help them feel less isolated. “When Your Child Is Sick: A Guide to Navigating the Practical and Emotional Challenges of Caring for a Child Who is Very Ill” has been called both compassionate and pragmatic.

Karin Tanabe

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Past and Present Will Thomas and Barry Dixon create new memories at their storied Warrenton estate.

By virginia coyne portrait by tony powell | exterior photo by gordon beall interior photos by Edward Addeo | Dining room photo by tria giovan | goat photo by Matthew Benson

HOME LIFE | INSIDE HOMES

estled on nearly 300 verdant acres in the rolling hills of the Virginia countryside, where the expansive views shift with the movements of the sun and clouds, Barry Dixon and Will Thomas’s estate, Elway Hall, is more than just a home to the couple; it is the backdrop to their lives. The land is a working farm, where they grow vegetables and flowers and pick their eggs fresh from the chicken coops. It’s a restful retreat, where they sit on the loggia to read as fawns cavort in the lea below and eagles circle above. It’s a muse for acclaimed interior designer Dixon’s work; his furniture liness and paint colors are all inspired by elements of the property, from the bend of the trees to the pink hue on the nose of his favorite goat. The grand, 20,000 square foot house is part castle, part storybook cottage. Inside are pieces designed by Dixon, a sofa that didn’t fit through a client’s door, unique items found by the couple on trips abroad, old books and family heirlooms. “I think some of the most inviting interiors have a sense of being pulled together over the course of a lifetime,” says Dixon. “It’s almost a little overcrowded, but in a good way.” Dixon has lived and worked at Elway Hall for two decades.Thomas, then an award-winning television journalist, took up residence six years ago. “When you’re in a relationship and decide it’s time to move in together, you figure out who has the better place,” says Thomas. “Barry won.” “Coming into a house that was so spectacularly done by a renowned designer, I wondered: ‘how do I make this feel like home to me?’” The answer proved easier than anticipated. The couple immediately folded Thomas’ art collection into the mix and began redecorating rooms together, including a dramatic guest room with a canopied bed and deep, luxurious seating, done entirely in Hermès orange, Thomas’ favorite color.

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PREVIOUS PAGE: (clockwise from left) The couple’s estate is also a working farm and home to goats, turkeys, chickens, a llama and 200 heads of cattle; the Great Hall is visually separated from the open foyer by sheer fabric panels by Henry Calvin. The metal mesh pedestal is a Barry Dixon for Avrett piece sold by J. Lambeth & Co.; a dramatic guest room, one of ten bedrooms in the house, is appointed in Thomas’ favorite color, Hermès orange. All the fabric and trims are Barry Dixon by Vervain and the wall color is from Dixon’s “The Naturals” collection at C2 Paint. THIS PAGE: (clockwise from top left) Elway Hall was designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and built in 1907 by former West Virginia senator and railroad tycoon Johnson Camden as a wedding present for his daughter, Annie Camden Spilman. The house features original Tiffany stained glass windows, seen here above the porte cochère; the dining room is just one of the spaces the couple uses to host dinner parties. The table is by J. Lambeth & Co., the raffia settee is by Oly and the stone pedestals were acquired at David Bell Antiques in Georgetown; the library also functions as an intimate entertaining space and features a wall of bookshelves, a daybed by Nancy Corzine, table by Barry Dixon for Avrett and drapery and pillow fabric by Watts of Westminster.

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But Thomas, who left Washington’s Fox affiliate station in 2016 to help care for ailing parents and reassess his career path, is no stranger to the design world. While living in the District, he purchased, redesigned and decorated five homes, selling each but one for a record price per square foot. Those experiences were, in part, what inspired his next journey: in September he announced he was joining the luxury real estate team at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. In creating a new life in Warrenton with Dixon, where the two say they feel as if they’re stewards of the property (commissioned by a railroad tycoon for his daughter around the turn of the century), Thomas also discovered a talent for cooking. He appropriated the catering kitchen in the stone cellar as his workshop and invites friends to the house to enjoy the spoils. “Will is a natural entertainer and loves to have people over,” says Dixon. “I love that too, but since I don’t cook, I didn’t entertain as much before he moved in.” Today, the duo work in tandem, whether hosting another couple for the weekend or a dinner party for two dozen guests. They choose a menu, pick flowers from the garden, select the silver and china (Dixon has an expansive collection of Wedgwood) and decide which of the many rooms they’ll eat in for the occasion: the dining room, the library or the inviting Great Hall, where in the winter, there is always a roaring fire awaiting guests. “We never do the same thing twice,” Dixon explains. “In the winter we spend more time in the library. In the summer, we set up long tables on the loggia. We don’t fall into a rut of doing the same thing over and over again.” “And there’s nowhere you can’t put up your feet and have a glass of red wine,” added Thomas. “It’s not a fussy house like that.”

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OPENING PAGE: Will Thomas and Barry Dixon share a cocktail in the house’s Great Hall.

HOME LIFE | REAL ESTATE NEWS

One-of-a-Kind Properties Estates in McLean and Middleburg change hands for the first time in decades after selling for more than $5 million each. BY STAC E Y G R A Z I E R P FA R R

The estate of the late Elaine Rosenweig sold FERN HILL RUN in McLean for $6.575 million to the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Embassy made headlines in May when it purchased Merrywood, Steve and Jean Case’s former home less than a minute away at 5700 Chain Bridge Road. for $49.5 million. The Fern Hill Run property, a waterfront estate built in 1988, was designed by Greek-Cypriot architect Angelos Demetriou and is perched on one of the most spectacular sites along McLean’s Gold Coast. Domed, barrel-vaulted ceilings and an impressive 17th-century fireplace highlight the principal reception rooms. Natural plaster interiors, cast-in-place concrete walls and Pelion stone floors imported from Greece provide a classical patina to the unique dwelling. An indoor lap pool opens directly to outdoor terraces. Robert Hryniewicki, Adam T. Rackliffe and Christopher Leary of HRL Partners at Washington Fine were the listing agents. Monica Boyd of Coldwell Banker was the buyer’s agent.

VIRGINIA Oakendale Farm at PENNY LANE in Middleburg sold for $8.75 million when the estate of the late conservationist and philanthropist Mary Sayles Booker Braga transferred the deed to Southern Holdings LLC.The French Provincial stone manor house was designed by architect William Lawrence Bottomley and build by W.J. Hanback in 1938. The estate also features two stone guest cottages, a greenhouse, a standalone office, a few ponds, a pool and pool house, stables and a log cabin along with 435 acres of rolling Virginian hills. John Coles and Rebecca Poston were the listing agents with Kathryn Harrell of Washington Fine Properties representing the buyers.

Quality Hill, one of Georgetown’s most historic properties at PROSPECT STREET NW, sold for $6,731,709 to a private trust. The former residence of Sen. Clairborne Pell and his wife Nuala, which was sold to Arent Fox law firm partner Ralph Taylor and his wife Nancy in 2004, was built in 1798 with bricks and materials imported from England. The gray brick Federal was dubbed Quality Hill by its first owner, John Thomson Mason, a nephew of Founding Father George Mason. Another owner of note was Albert Clemons, the owner of nearby Halcyon House, who used the mansion on Prospect for storage. The nine-bedroom, 10,000-squarefoot property was visited by Thomas Jefferson, who is said to have dined there. TTR Sotheby’s International Real Estate’s Russell Firestone was the listing agent. Washington Fine Properties Susan Maguire represented the buyer.

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Mohammad Nayebpour purchased CALIFORNIA STREET NW from David Riley and Paula Castellano for $3.055 million. The 1923 Kalorama Colonial was meticulously renovated from top-to-bottom to include a main level featuring a formal living room, a dining room, an enclosed sunroom, a powder room and a gourmet kitchen leading to back gardens. The upper two levels include a spacious master bedroom suite and three additional bedroom plus a lower level in-law suite with its own kitchen. Compassâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Patrick Chauvin and Brad House were the listing agents. The property was purchased with the help of Washington Fine Propertiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Kellyann Dorfman.

MARYLAND Celebrity consulting firm founder Michael Berkman and his wife Jeannie sold BURDETTE ROAD to an undisclosed buyer for $5.1 million. The couple purchased the house in 2012 from Rand Construction Corporation founder Linda Rabbitt and her husband John Whalen for $5.795 million. The French Country stone and stucco villa in the Bradley Hills Grove neighborhood was custom built in 2007 and includes a separate guest house, a detached office, an exercise facility and five-car garage parking. The listing agent was Long & Fosterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Marc Fleisher and Lee Arrowood. H. Joe Faraji of Long & Foster Real Estate Inc. represented the buyer.

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Washington Fine Propertiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Associate broker Liz Lavette Shorb and her husband Bob Shorb sold

HESKETH STREET for $2.5 million. The charming French Provincial in Chevy Chase Village was built in 1928 and sits on one-third of an acre of well manicured land backing to the Chevy Chase Clubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s golf course. Four finished levels of renovated space include five bedrooms and multiple family rooms, a gourmet kitchen that opens to a breakfast room and a lower level recreation room. Mrs. Shorb was the listing agent. Sheena Saydam of Keller Williams Capital Properties represented the buyer.

HOME LIFE | REAL ESTATE NEWS

PROPERTY LINES

FORMER CONSULATE PROPERTY: TRACY PLACE NW in Kalorama hit the market for $5.295 million. Tom and Maggie Sheedy restored the six-bedroom 1914 Georgian Revival to a private residence after purchasing it for $2.101 million in 2013 from the Republic of Portugal, which used it as an office for its military attachĂŠ. Designer Lauren Liess assisted in decorating the house, which boasts custom hardwood floors, honed marble surfaces, a wood-paneled library, two laundry rooms and a sunny kitchen with an adjacent sunroom leading to a private patio and garden. Long and Fosterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Benjamin Tessler is the listing agent.

A VILLA WITH VIEWS: Michael Warden, a partner at Sidley law firm is selling his five-bedroom Mediterranean-style villa at FOXVIEW CIRCLE NW for $3.995 million. The 7,000-square-foot abode was built in 2015 and occupies a unique lot bordering parkland that affords privacy and green views. Amenities include a chefâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kitchen, a wine cellar, an outdoor living room and a large patio complete with fountain and lower loggia. The property is listed by Robert Hryniewicki, Adam T. Rackliffe and Christopher Leary of HRL Partners at Washington Fine Properties.

SPRING VALLEY DREAM HOUSE: Sullivan & Cromwell LLP partner Robert Risoleo and his wife Lucretia Adymy Risoleo listed INDIAN LANE NW for $7.45 million with Washington Fine Propertiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Liz Lavette Shorb. The 10,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom mansion was completely renovated to include custom millwork, geothermal heat, an impressive billiards room and a gourmet kitchen with all the culinary bells and whistles imaginable. Additional features of the 1931 Colonial include a home theater, a gym, a wine cellar, an au pair suite and a pool.

CHARACTER IN KALORAMA: Monte Meltzer and Carol Nacy listed their 1890 Sheridan-Kalorama row-house at

Q STREET NW for $2 million with the help of Robert Hryniewicki, Adam T. Rackliffe, and Christopher Leary of HRL Partners at Washington Fine Properties. The brick Romanesque Revival residence features inlaid floors, gracious room proportions, an in-law apartment and proximity to the embassies of Romania, Ireland, Greece, Bahamas, Togo and Luxembourg.

Send real estate news to Stacey Grazier Pfarr at editorial@washingtonlife.com.

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OPEN HOUSE

Open House These desirable properties are on the market. GEORGETOWN TH ST NW This beautifully renovated 1801 semi-detached Federal offers five bedrooms, five full baths and two half baths, an au pair suite with a separate entrance, a sunroom, six fireplaces, wide-plank flooring, smart-phone thermostats, heated floors and Waterworks. The property spans a full block featuring a slated terrace, a wallhigh fountain, a completely private garden with an expansive lawn, grandfathered easement for a pool and a three-car parking

ASKING PRICE: $5,650,000 LISTING AGENT: Jean Hanan, 202494-8157, Washington Fine Properties

MCLEAN CHAIN BRIDGE ROAD ASKING PRICE: $4,800,000 Built in 2009, this stunning custom home sits beautifully along McLean’s “Gold Coast” alongside some of the LISTING AGENT: most notable properties in the Capital Region. With nine Fouad Talout, 703.459.4141 bedrooms and seven full and one half baths, this architectural Long & Foster | Christie’s masterpiece spans four levels and also includes two guest apartments. Featuring a gourmet kitchen with French doors opening to an elevated porch, as well as exquisite grounds that include a pool, this home is one of the finest in Northern Virginia.

CHEVY CHASE KENNEDY DRIVE This magnificent Georgian Colonial sits on a corner lot across from the Park & Capital Crescent Trail in the desirable Kenwood neighborhood of Chevy Chase, Maryland.With more than 6,000 square feet of interior living space, this extraordinary home offers a banquet-sized dining room, a chef ’s kitchen and a master suite with a home office.

ASKING PRICE: $3,495,000 LISTING AGENT: Lindsay Lucas, 301-467-4090, TTR Sotheby’s International Realty

LOGAN CIRCLE S ST NW Once the home of a famous poet and playwright, this Logan Circle gem features three luxurious residences in one to use as you like: a main residence, an English basement and a carriage house featuring six bedrooms, five bathrooms and three full kitchens. Meticulous details greet you at every turn, from the outdoor living space to the wine cellar and chef style kitchen. It’s a rare chance to own a piece of Washington, D.C. history and an amazing investment.

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ASKING PRICE: $2,975,000 LISTING AGENTS: Alex Vendi>i, 202-3876180, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage

LIFESTYLES | EVENTS DC HOME LIFE | EVENTS DC

INVESTING IN THE CITY

Events DC revitalizes Southeast neighborhoods with new sports and entertainment offerings. BY ERICA MOODY

ur city moves forward when all parts of the city move forward,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said to cheers at the September grand opening of the new Entertainment & Sports Arena in Congress Heights. “A lot of people come here during election time and never come back.” Thanks to the efforts of a determined mayor, Events DC (the city’s official convention and sports authority) and Monumental Sports and Entertainment, an oft-neglected part of the nation’s capital will benefit from business and job opportunities that the new arena will bring to Ward 8. The nearly $65 million, 118,000-squarefoot, 4,200-seat arena on the site of the old St. Elizabeth’s Hospital will be home to the Washington Mystics and the Capital City Go-Gos and a practice center for the

Wizards as well as a setting for concerts from big-name musical acts like Mary J Blige and Cage the Elephant. “Nothing’s been more gratifying to me than this project because of the passion of the community and how it will be transformational for the city,” said Events DC president and CEO Gregory O’Dell. And while this new arena is bringing business to Congress Heights, the new RFK Stadium Campus redevelopment is set to transform Ward 6. In September, Events DC broke ground on the first phase of the $489 million redevelopment of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium near the Anacostia River that is converting a surrounding 27 acres of asphalt parking into an exciting new complex, with restaurants, shopping and parks. There will be more than

200,000 square feet of fields to accommodate soccer, lacrosse, baseball, softball and more; youth sports areas available to the public, picnic areas, playground, walking and bike paths, dedicated parking, a market hall and even a democracy memorial to educate visitors. Events DC will manage the fields in collaboration with an operator for local scheduling and maintenance assistance. The estimated total cost for the fields is $32 million. Construction on the multi-purpose recreational fields are estimated to open for play in March 2019. If Mayor Bowser has her way, the 190acre campus will bring the Redskins back to Washington. “We think all of our professional sports teams should be within city limits,” she told politicians and players recently at the team’s

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MAP OF RFK STADIUM DEVELOPMENT

The ribbon cutting of the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Congress Heights on Sept. 22 (Photo by Tony Powell)

RFK Stadium masterplan rendering (Image Courtesy of OMA and Robata)

annual “Welcome Home” luncheon. It remains to be seen whether that will happen, but we do know that the neighborhood will benefit nonetheless. “Here at RFK, Washingtonians will have it all—the amenities of a big city, access to a thriving waterfront and fantastic outdoor fields and play space,” Bowser has said. And considering how expeditious she and Events DC were with the Entertainment & Sports Arena buildup, the Redskins may be in town sooner than you’d expect.

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MY WASHINGTON DINA KAWAR Ambassador of Jordan

INTERVIEW BY KEVIN CHAFFEE

In summer, the new Wharf area is a great place for dinner at Del Mar (791 Wharf St. SW) and an after-dinner walk.

Falafel Inc. (1210 Potomac St. NW) founded by Ahmad Ashkar, who gives part of his profit to refugees. Their falafel is one of the best!

A Mano (1677 Wisconsin Ave. NW) has a wonderful selection of gifts.

I like Doi Moi (1800 14th St. NW) for an occasional good and spicy Asian meal with friends and family.

YOUR COUSIN, KARIM KAWAR, SERVED AS JORDAN’S ENVOY HERE NOT SO LONG AGO. WOULD YOU SAY THAT YOU COME FROM A DIPLOMATIC FAMILY? Both Karim and I are the only ambassadors in the family, at least up until now! Having said that, the commitment to duty and public service is deeply rooted in our family culture. Both my father and grandfather served in the military all their lives. Karim’ s grandfather discovered phosphate in Jordan back in 1935, while his father founded and led a shipping business in 1956, which became key in building and growing this sector and helped Aqaba flourish in its role as a key regional port.

Therefore, serving our country is part of our DNA. HAVE YOU VISITED MUCH OF THIS COUNTRY? WHAT WOULD YOU STILL LIKE TO SEE AND DO YOU HAVE MUCH INTERACTION WITH THE JORDANIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY? One of my main goals is to visit the various states across the country and to connect with the Jordanian communities that are spread out. My aim is to open channels to help them remain in touch with their home country. During my state visits, I also make it a point to meet with local officials, whether governors and/or mayors, and visit universities and research centers, as well as cultural places. The objective is to explore, as much as possible, the various avenues that would allow for further cooperation on both the educational and cultural levels. As for what’s on my personal wish list, I would love to visit the national parks and enjoy the incredible nature attractions this country has to offer. WHAT ARE YOUR CHIEF GOALS FOR MAINTAINING AND IMPROVING RELATIONS BETWEEN YOUR COUNTRY AND THE U.S.? Our primary role as an embassy is to follow up on the work and efforts of His Majesty King Abdullah II to ensure that, together, we advance our shared goals of development, security and regional peace. Next year, we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Jordan and the U.S. This is a major milestone in our bilateral relations and we have been privileged to enjoy a bipartisan support, partnership and friendship over the years. Aside from advancing Jordan’s economic and political interests, I also hope to expand on the educational and cultural exchange programs between our countries.

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P O RT RA I T BY TO N Y P OW E L L ; P H OTOS CO U RT E SY O F E STABL I S H M E N TS

MY TOP SPOTS

HOW DID YOU COME TO BE A DIPLOMAT? I always had a natural affinity for world affairs without really knowing where life would take me one day. As for all Middle Easterners, politics is part of my everyday life. After graduating from high school, I went to the U.S. where I received my Bachelor’s degree from Mills College in Oakland, Calif. and my Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University in New York. I also attended a mid-career program at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Before joining the diplomatic corps, I spent several years as part of H.R.H. Prince El Hassan’s office staff both in Amman and in Paris, a valuable experience that helped prepare me for what lay ahead. In 2001, I was appointed by His Majesty King Abdullah II as ambassador to France, UNESCO and as nonresident ambassador to the Holy See. Four years later, Portugal was also added to my portfolio. It was, and truly is, the highest of honors. I was a political appointee, the intention of which at the time, was to enhance the number of women in the diplomatic corps.